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Dessert

Delicate Pudding

A light custard-like pudding made with butter, flour, milk, eggs, sugar, and bread crumbs, baked until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Delicate 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. Cream the butter in a mixing bowl.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook in the hot milk, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens.

  3. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, then add the sugar and stir into the hot mixture.

  4. Stir in the bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Carefully butter individual molds and dredge with sugar, then pour the mixture into the molds.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until firm.

  3. Serve with orange or lemon 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Butter
Adds richness and a tender, rich mouthfeel to the pudding.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk into a stable base that holds the pudding's shape.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding its firm structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and stay light.
Milk
Provides moisture and body for the thickened custard base.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and cook in the hot milk until thickened. Flour starch must be cooked in hot liquid until it thickens, or the batter stays pasty and the flour taste persists. Constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the pan bottom.

“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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