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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A baked milk-based sponge pudding made with flour, sugar, butter, and eggs.

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

Sponge 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.

Make the batter

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it is almost boiling.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted.

  3. Add the flour and sugar, mixing well.

  4. Incorporate the beaten egg yolks, then gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pan or mold and place it in a larger pan filled with hot water.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

  3. Serve with foam sauce.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whites beaten and folded in give the pudding its airy lift.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape as the batter sets in the oven.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the pudding its moisture and tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps with gentle browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten, and stirring them vigorously deflates the foam. Folding gently keeps the air in, so the pudding rises light instead of dense.

“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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