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Dessert

Sour Cream Pudding

A baked pudding made with sour cream, eggs, sugar, flour, lemon, brandy, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sour Cream Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the sifted flour, sour cream, lemon juice, and brandy; mix until smooth.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form.

  5. Gently fold the egg whites into the sour cream mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered souffle pan.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve directly from the baking dish.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Flour and butter 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 yolks
Add richness and help set the custard-like texture as the pudding bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and give it rise and an airy texture.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, tang and a creamy, tender body to the pudding.
Sifted flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape after baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and balances the tang of the sour cream.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites gently. Stiff whites hold the air that lightens the pudding. Vigorous stirring deflates them, leaving a dense result instead of a light, risen one.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, cream, brandy, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, cream, brandy, butter. 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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