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Dessert

Peach Pudding

A steamed pudding made with a stiff batter, layered with peaches, and finished with a lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Peach Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat a steamer.

  2. Butter a pudding dish.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg, milk, softened butter, sugar, flour, and baking powder to form a stiff batter.

Assemble and steam

  1. Add a layer of batter.

  2. Add a layer of fruit, filling the dish.

  3. Top with another layer of batter.

  4. Leave a layer of butter on top.

  5. Steam for 1 hour.

Make the lemon sauce

  1. For lemon sauce, cream together sugar and butter.

  2. Mix cornstarch with a little water.

  3. Add the mixture to 2 cups of boiling water.

  4. Cook until clear.

  5. Pour over the creamed sugar.

  6. Add lemon juice and beaten egg yolk.

  7. Fold in the egg white.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firm as it steams.
Milk
Adds moisture so the batter steams into a soft, tender pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep the crumb tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming so the pudding rises and lightens.

The step that matters

Cook the lemon sauce until clear. Cornstarch thickens only when it is heated fully, and it turns clear once its starch has cooked through. An undercooked sauce stays cloudy, thin, and can taste raw and starchy.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, butter, sugar, flour, peach, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, butter, sugar, flour, peach, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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