Skip to main content
Dessert

Transparent Pudding

A sweet pudding made with butter, sugar, nutmeg, eggs, flavored with vanilla or other extracts, baked and topped with browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24,377 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Transparent Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Warm a small cupful of fresh butter, but do not melt it.

  2. Cream one cupful of sifted sugar with the butter.

  3. Grate a teaspoonful of nutmeg.

  4. Beat eight eggs, separating yolks and whites.

  5. Beat the butter and sugar light.

Make the filling

  1. Add the nutmeg and the beaten eggs gradually, stirring in.

  2. Flavor with vanilla, almond, peach or rose-water, and stir hard.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a deep dish and line it with puff paste.

  2. Bake for half an hour.

  3. Make a meringue for the top and brown it.

  4. Serve cold.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

241Calories
6 gProtein
18 gFat
14 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12

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

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. 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. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Eggs
Add structure and set the filling as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, creamed with butter, traps air for a lighter texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a tender texture.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavor.

The step that matters

Add the eggs gradually. Adding the beaten eggs a little at a time, while stirring, helps the mixture stay smooth and emulsified. Dumping them in at once can cause the butter to separate and the filling to curdle.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes