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Dessert

Cream

A fruit pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, brandy, spice, and flour‑dredged fruit, boiled in a cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks until smooth and light.

  3. Add the milk.

  4. Alternate adding the flour and beaten egg whites.

  5. Stir in the brandy and spice.

  6. Fold in the dredged fruit.

Prepare the cloth

  1. Prepare a pudding cloth by wringing it out in hot water. Flour the inside of the cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the cloth.

  2. Boil for five hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 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. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter into a smooth, set pudding.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to lighten the batter and give it a airy structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and tenderness to the batter.
Fruit
Adds flavour, moisture and sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the dredged fruit. Flouring the fruit helps keep it suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during boiling. Gentle folding keeps the batter light.

“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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