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Dessert

Saratoga Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Saratoga 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.

Make the pudding

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the milk, melted butter, sugar, flour, and 2 whole eggs.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

  4. Bake for about 30 minutes.

Frost and finish

  1. While baking, beat the reserved egg whites with a little sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Remove the pudding from the oven and spread the beaten egg whites on top.

  3. Return to the oven and brown lightly.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and, as whipped whites, form the light topping.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the pudding sets with body.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that bakes into a custard-like pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stiffen the egg white topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Egg whites only hold air when fully whipped and free of fat or yolk. Under-beaten whites stay runny and slide off, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy, so the topping may not brown evenly.

“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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