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Mexican Batter Pudding

A baked pudding made with layers of cold roast mutton, boiled onion, bread, and a batter of flour, egg, milk, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Mexican Batter 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.

Layer the dish

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

  2. Layer the bottom of a pie dish with slices of cold roast mutton and chopped boiled onion, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add a thin slice of bread on top, followed by another layer of onions, mutton, salt, pepper, and bread.

  4. Spread the top slice of bread with dripping.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Beat the egg and combine it with milk and a little water.

  3. Gradually pour the egg mixture into the flour, stirring until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter over the layered ingredients in the pie dish.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Slices of cold roast mutton
Provides the meat filling and savoury flavour of the dish.
Slices of bread
Soak up juices and fat, giving the layers a soft, moist texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping it rise and turn light.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set into a custard-like crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter, helping it brown gently.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the flour. Adding the liquid gradually and stirring until smooth prevents lumps of dry flour from forming. Lumps stay floury and make the batter uneven once baked.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, bread, flour, egg, milk):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, bread, flour, egg, milk. 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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