Skip to main content
Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A steamed sponge pudding made with sugar, egg, sweet milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sponge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the sugar, egg, and sweet milk until well combined.

  2. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

  3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 2.5 hours.

  3. Serve with sweetened cream or pudding sauce.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the sponge together as it steams.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help the pudding rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the sponge a tender crumb.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and richness to the batter.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding dry ingredients slowly and stirring only until smooth keeps the batter from becoming lumpy or overworked. Overmixing develops gluten and can make the steamed sponge dense and tough, while the leavening gas is best kept for the steaming stage.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes