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Dessert

Batter Pudding, Boiled or Steamed

A boiled or steamed batter pudding made with flour, milk, eggs, and optional butter and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Batter Pudding, Boiled or Steamed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grease a basin thoroughly.

  2. Mix the batter as for Yorkshire pudding, ensuring it is stiffer than for a baked pudding.

Cook

  1. For boiling, fill the basin and cover with a slack cloth.

  2. For steaming, twist paper loosely over the basin; it can be less than full.

  3. If using egg whites separately, omit baking powder.

  4. Boil gently for about 1.5 hours, longer for a deep mold.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweet sauce, heated fruit jelly, butter and sugar, or lemon.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Fine flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it sets.
Eggs
Set with heat to bind the batter and add structure and richness.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the pudding rise.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Leave room for the pudding to rise. The batter expands as it heats and needs space and loose covering so steam can escape. Filling the basin too full or sealing it tightly can make the pudding heavy or misshapen.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, 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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