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Dessert

Battee Pudding

A boiled pudding made from flour, eggs, and milk, sweetened to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Battee Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, stir together the flour, beaten eggs, and milk.

  2. Sweeten the mixture to taste and mix until smooth, resembling the thickness of good cream.

Cook

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered basin.

  2. Boil the basin in water until the pudding is cooked through.

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. Flour + sugartop 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).

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
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body as it cooks.
Eggs
Set with heat to give the pudding structure and a firm, custard-like texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture that keeps the pudding tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the flavour of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Boil the basin until the pudding is cooked through. The eggs set as they heat, so the centre needs enough time in the water to firm up. Stopping early leaves the pudding wet and loose, while overly vigorous heat can make the texture rubbery.

“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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