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Dessert

Delicate Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with sweet milk, eggs, flour, and a pinch of salt, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Delicate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Separate the egg yolks and whites.

  3. Beat the yolks and whites in separate bowls.

Make the batter

  1. Add a little milk to the yolks, then mix in the flour.

  2. Combine the yolk mixture with the remaining milk.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

  2. Serve with sweetened cream.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Whites trapped by beating and folded in add lightness, while yolks enrich and help the custard set.
Flour
Gives the pudding body and structure so it holds together once baked.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid base that gives the pudding its moisture and soft texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air from beating, and that air gives the pudding its lightness. Stirring vigorously knocks the air out, leaving a dense, flat result.

“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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