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Dessert

Sour Cream Pudding

A baked pudding made with sour cream, eggs, sugar, flour, lemon, brandy, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sour Cream Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the sifted flour, sour cream, lemon juice, and brandy; mix until smooth.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form.

  5. Gently fold the egg whites into the sour cream mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered souffle pan.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve directly from the baking dish.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and set the custard-like body of the pudding as they cook.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and help it rise in the oven.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and a tangy flavor that keeps the pudding creamy after baking.
Sifted flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape once baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps tenderize the yolk mixture.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the sour cream mixture. Whipped egg whites trap air that makes the pudding rise. Stirring them vigorously knocks out that air, so the pudding bakes up dense rather than light. Fold gently with a spatula until no white streaks remain.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, cream, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, cream, brandy. 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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