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Dessert

Puff Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sugar, egg, milk, flour, and baking powder, topped with a butter-sugar sauce and fresh berries.

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 ↓

Puff Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, egg, milk, flour, and baking powder until smooth.

Steam the pudding

  1. Pour the mixture into cups and steam until cooked through.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the pudding sauce, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add fresh berries to the sauce and serve over the pudding.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flour
Forms the structure that sets the pudding as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the pudding's structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a tender batter.

The step that matters

Steaming until cooked through. Steam holds the batter at a steady moist heat, so the centre sets without drying out. Lifting the lid too often lets steam escape and can cause uneven cooking, so the pudding may stay gummy in the middle.

“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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