Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made by boiling cinnamon in cream, thickened with egg yolks, then set in a cloth and served with a white wine sauce.

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

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil cinnamon in thin cream with sugar until cold.

  2. Beat egg yolks and mix with the cream mixture.

  3. Heat over low heat, stirring until thick but do not boil.

  4. Let it cool completely.

Boil in a cloth

  1. Butter a cloth and dredge the cloth with flour.

  2. Pour the custard into the cloth and tie the cloth tightly.

  3. Boil for 45 minutes.

  4. Cool slightly in a basin.

Serve

  1. Turn out onto a dish and remove the cloth carefully.

  2. Garnish with grated sugar.

  3. Serve with a sauce of white wine thickened with flour and butter.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set on gentle heat, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Thin cream
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds richness and a soft, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds body to the cream base.
Flour
Dredged on the cloth to help the pudding release, and thickens the wine sauce.
White wine
Provides acidity and flavour in the sauce served with the pudding.

The step that matters

Heat over low heat, stirring until thick but do not boil. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the custard boils, the proteins curdle and it turns grainy and loses its smooth set.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, egg, flour, white wine, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, flour, white wine, butter. 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

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes