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Dessert

Dandy Pudding

A baked milk and egg pudding topped with jam and a sweetened egg white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Dandy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk, flour, and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake until nearly set.

Top and brown

  1. Spread a layer of jam over the pudding.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites and gradually add the powdered sugar to make frosting.

  3. Spread the frosting over the jam layer and return to the oven to brown.

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 + flourtop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture and softness.
Flour
Thickens the custard so it holds a soft, sliceable structure.
Egg yolks
Set during baking to give the custard its body and richness.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a light frosting that browns in the oven.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue-style frosting and helps it stay stable when beaten.

The step that matters

Baking the custard until nearly set. Egg proteins set with heat, so pulling the pudding at the nearly set stage keeps it tender. Baking too long makes the custard firm, grainy, or watery as it overcooks.

“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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