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Dessert

Almond Pudding

A baked almond pudding made with milk, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, lemon essence, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the milk and let it cool.

  2. Beat the eggs lightly with the flour.

  3. Blanch the almonds and pound them in a mortar to a paste with the lemon essence.

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter in the milk.

  2. Add the sugar and pounded almonds to the milk.

  3. Beat all ingredients well together.

Bake

  1. Bake in buttered cups or small molds.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Set the custard-like batter and add structure as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and gives the pudding body.
Almonds
Provide the main flavour and a rich, nutty texture.
Milk
Supplies liquid that moistens the pudding and carries the other ingredients.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake in buttered cups or small molds. Eggs set as they heat, so baking too long or too hot can leave the pudding dry, rubbery, or curdled. Buttering the molds keeps the pudding from sticking when turned out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More almond pudding recipes

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