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Dessert

Princess Pudding

A baked almond pudding made with butter, milk, flour, sugar, eggs, cardamom, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Henrietta Latham Dwight · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Princess Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt two and a half ounces of butter in a quarter of a cup of rich milk over the fire.

  2. Stir an ounce and a half of flour into half a cup of milk and add to the boiling milk, stirring constantly until it becomes a smooth paste and no longer adheres to the pan.

  3. When the mixture is cold, stir in one good ounce of sugar, an ounce of almonds blanched and pounded very fine with a dozen cardamom seeds, three well beaten eggs, a little at a time, and half a teaspoonful of almond extract. Beat well.

Bake and serve

  1. Turn into a buttered pudding mould sprinkled with fine bread crumbs.

  2. Set the mould covered in a pan of boiling water in the oven, and if the mould has a pipe in the center bake from thirty to thirty-five minutes.

  3. Turn it out and serve immediately with a fruit or wine sauce.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

385Calories
15 gProtein
25 gFat
26 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Almond1 almond (1.2g)7

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

By Henrietta Latham Dwight. 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and set into a light, tender pudding structure as they cook.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the boiled milk into a smooth paste that gives the pudding body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pudding a tender crumb.
Almonds
Contribute nutty flavor and a fine texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly as it bakes.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour paste until smooth. Stirring the flour into boiling milk constantly gelatinises the starch and cooks out its raw taste. Stopping early leaves lumps or a floury flavour, and the paste must be cool before the eggs are added so they do not scramble.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Cocoafits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, 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.

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