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Dessert

Hasty Pudding

A milk and flour pudding thickened by boiling, optionally enriched with egg, butter, salt, cinnamon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Hasty Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the milk in a pot over medium heat.

  2. Gradually add flour while stirring continuously until thickened.

  3. Boil for a few more minutes.

  4. Pour into a dish and garnish with pieces of butter.

  5. For a richer pudding, beat the egg and mix with flour to form a stiff paste.

  6. Add the paste to the boiling milk with butter, salt, cinnamon, and sugar, stirring well.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a pudding.
All-purpose flour
Its starch thickens the hot milk into a soft, set pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Egg
Optional; adds protein and richness to the pudding's texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the mild flavor of the milk.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour while stirring continuously. Flour starch granules clump when dumped into hot liquid. Adding it slowly while stirring disperses each granule, so the pudding thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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