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Dessert

Quick Puff Pudding

A steamed puff pudding topped with strawberries and a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Quick Puff Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl.

  2. Add milk gradually to make a drop batter.

Fill and steam

  1. Pour batter into individual cups and add 4 strawberries to each cup.

  2. Steam the cups until cooked through.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in sugar, then add eggs and milk, cooking until thickened.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the batter rise and become light.
Strawberries
Add moisture and fruity flavor that soaks into the cooked batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances its richness.
Eggs
Their proteins set as they heat, thickening the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce until thickened. Egg proteins thicken the sauce as they heat, but if it gets too hot or is left unstirred, the eggs can scramble and curdle. Gentle heat and constant stirring keep it smooth.

“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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