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Dessert

Swiss Pudding

A steamed milk pudding made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, and lemon seasoning, served with a sauce of sugar, butter, corn starch, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Swiss Pudding

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 ↓

Swiss Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine 2-3 pints of sifted flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  2. In another bowl, rub together 4 heaping tablespoons of sugar with 2 tablespoons of melted butter.

  3. Add 1 egg to the sugar mixture and thin it with 2-3 pints of sweet milk.

  4. Add lemon seasoning to taste and mix well.

Steam and make the sauce

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and steam for 2 hours.

  2. For the sauce, combine 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 tablespoons of butter, and ½ tablespoon of corn starch in a saucepan.

  3. Add the yolk of 1 well-beaten egg and 1 teacup of boiling milk, then boil for 1 minute.

  4. Finally, fold in the stiffly beaten egg white.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Forms the structure of the pudding as it steams and sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming so the pudding rises and turns light.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure to the pudding.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it boils.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg white. Egg white holds air only when whipped stiff, and folding gently keeps that air in the sauce so it stays light. Stirring vigorously would deflate it.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, egg, milk, sauce, corn):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, milk, sauce, corn. 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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