Skip to main content
Dessert

Scotch Pudding

A barley pudding with whisky, sugar, butter, eggs, and lemon rind, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Scotch 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a stew pan, combine the barley and sugar.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Stir in the butter, salt, lemon rind, and whisky.

  4. Heat the mixture on the stove until it boils, then stir until smooth.

  5. Incorporate the egg yolks, then gently fold in the whisked egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a lightly buttered pie dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Butter + whiskytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together335 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Barley
Forms the body of the pudding, giving it a soft, substantial texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Egg whites
Whisked and folded in to add lightness and help the pudding rise.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the batter.
Milk
Provides the liquid that gives the batter its moist, creamy base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whisked whites trap air that gives lift; stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, so they should be folded in gently and evenly to keep the pudding light.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, sugar, milk, butter, whisky, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes