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Dessert

Sponge Cake Pudding

A baked pudding made from sugar, flour, butter, milk, egg yolks, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sponge Cake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar and flour together.

  3. Wet the mixture with a little cold milk.

Make the custard

  1. Stir the wet mixture into boiling milk.

  2. Cook the mixture until it thickens and is smooth.

  3. Add butter to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into cups.

  2. Place the cups in a pan of hot water.

  3. Bake until set.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Sugar + flourtop 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

Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps tenderise its texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it sets into a soft structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer crumb.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a custard.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set with added richness.
Egg whites
Whipped to add air, giving the pudding its light, sponge-like rise.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when whipped stiff, and deflating them by overmixing loses the lift that gives the sponge its lightness. Fold gently so the air stays trapped while the mixture is evenly combined.

“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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