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Dessert

Dew Pudding

A baked pudding made with crackers, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and salt, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Dew 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the finely rolled crackers, milk, egg yolks, butter, and salt.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

  2. While baking, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the sugar.

  3. Once the pudding is baked, spread the meringue on top and return to the oven to brown.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Egg + buttertop 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 (yolks)
Yolks enrich and set the custard, giving the pudding its body and richness.
Eggs (whites)
Whites beaten with sugar form a stiff meringue that browns and gives a light topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the crackers soften in and sets with the eggs.
Crackers
Finely rolled crackers absorb the milk and thicken the pudding base.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps it hold its stiff, glossy structure.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites and adding the sugar. Whites must be beaten until stiff before the sugar is added gradually; under-beaten or greasy whites will not hold peaks, leaving a weak meringue that may weep or fail to brown well.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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