Skip to main content
Dessert

Austrian Pudding

A sweet pudding made with flour, suet, treacle, milk, and sugar, baked slowly for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Austrian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

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

  2. Warm the milk, then stir it into the treacle.

  3. Add the milk and treacle mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered basin.

  2. Boil for 3 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Forms the main structure of the pudding as its starches set when cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender.
Treacle
Provides sweetness, depth of flavour and a dark colour.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and loosens the batter.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 hours. A long, steady boil cooks the batter through and sets its crumb evenly. If the water drops too low or stops simmering, the centre can stay heavy and underdone.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes