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Dessert

Iced Pudding

A chilled almond and egg custard set in a mold and served with fruit compote.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,800 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Iced Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch and dry the sweet and bitter almonds thoroughly in a cloth.

  2. Pound the almonds in a mortar until reduced to a smooth paste.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine the well-beaten eggs, sugar, and milk.

  2. Stir the mixture over low heat until it thickens, but do not allow it to boil.

Freeze and mold

  1. Strain the mixture and pour it into a freezing can.

  2. Surround the can with ice and freeze the mixture.

  3. Once frozen, fill an iced pudding mold, cover it with a lid, and keep it in ice until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. To serve, turn the pudding out onto a dish and garnish with a compote of your preferred fruit, pouring a little over the top.

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. Almond + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Thicken the milk mixture as they set, giving the frozen pudding its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base, adding creaminess to the frozen custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen pudding.
Sweet almonds
Pounded to a paste, they add fat and a mild, nutty flavor.
Bitter almonds
Contribute a strong, aromatic almond flavor in small amounts.

The step that matters

Stir the custard over low heat without boiling. Egg proteins set gently as the mixture warms. If it boils or overheats, the eggs can curdle and turn grainy, so the custard must thicken slowly and stay below boiling.

Swap the almond

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

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

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