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Dessert

Woodford Pudding

A baked egg and flour pudding with raspberry jam, topped with a butter‑sugar sauce and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Woodford Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, butter, flour, baking soda dissolved in sour milk, and raspberry jam until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake slowly until set.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.

  2. Add boiling water to reach the desired consistency, then place the bowl over hot water.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and spread over the pudding before serving.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Set as they bake, giving the pudding its body and a custard-like structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pudding its structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to release gas, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds a slight tang to the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep it moist and tender.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until set. Low, gentle heat lets the egg proteins set gradually. Baking too hot or too long can curdle the eggs and make the pudding dry and rubbery.

Swap the raspberry

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

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

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