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Dessert

Baked Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, lemon rind, sugar, eggs, and cream, baked slowly and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Baked Custard Pudding

6 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Put the milk into a saucepan with the sugar and lemon rind, and let it infuse for about 4 hours or until the milk is well flavoured.

  2. Whisk the eggs, yolks and whites.

  3. Pour the infused milk into the eggs, stirring all the while.

Prepare and bake

  1. Prepare a pie dish and line its edge with pastry that is ready baked.

  2. Strain the custard into the prepared dish.

  3. Grate a little nutmeg over the top.

  4. Bake in a very slow oven for about ½ hour or longer.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

290Calories
15 gProtein
19 gFat
17 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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

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

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 and carries the lemon flavour during infusing.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
Half cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother texture to the set custard.

The step that matters

Bake in a very slow oven. Eggs set through gentle heat. A hot oven makes the custard curdle, turn grainy and weep liquid, so keep the oven very slow and check for a set centre.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, cream. 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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