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Dessert

Bourbon Pudding

A baked pudding made with eggs, sugar, butter, flour, milk, bourbon, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Bourbon 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 the pudding

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

  2. Reserve the egg whites for meringue.

  3. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Mix in the flour and milk.

  6. Flavor the mixture with bourbon.

  7. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat the reserved egg whites until soft peaks form.

  2. Gradually add 4 tablespoons of sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding.

  4. Brown in the oven.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Yolks enrich and thicken the filling, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, added gradually, stabilizes the whipped egg white meringue.
Flour
Thickens the milk and egg mixture so the filling holds its body when baked.
Milk
Provides liquid that combines with the eggs and flour to form a custard-like filling.
Bourbon whisky
Adds a distinctive aroma and flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Beat the meringue to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff with sugar added gradually; under-whipped whites may weep or collapse, and the meringue may not brown and hold well on top of the pudding.

“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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