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Dessert

Honey Pudding

A honey-based custard made with butter, bread crumbs, egg yolks, thickened with arrowroot or corn starch and flavored with orange extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Honey Pudding

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 ↓

Honey Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the honey and butter.

  2. Stir in the bread crumbs.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and mix the beaten yolks into the mixture.

  4. Beat the mixture for 10 minutes.

  5. Pour the mixture into a suitable dish.

Cook and serve

  1. Set the dish in water.

  2. Boil or steam for 1½ hours.

  3. Make a sauce with arrowroot or corn-starch.

  4. Flavor the sauce with orange extract.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Arrowroot + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Honey + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,068 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Honey + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,327 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Honey
Provides sweetness and moisture, and helps the pudding stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and set during cooking to give a firm, custard-like texture.
Arrowroot or corn-starch
Thickens the sauce to a smooth, glossy consistency.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for 1½ hours. Gentle, steady heat in a water bath lets the egg yolks set evenly. Boiling too hard or letting the water run dry can make the pudding rough, cracked, or unevenly cooked.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (honey, butter, bread, egg, orange):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, butter, bread, egg, orange. 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.

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