Skip to main content
Dessert

Milk-made Desserts

A custard pudding made with milk, egg yolks, sugar, corn starch, and fruit, baked and topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Milk-made Desserts

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.

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk, egg yolks, sugar, and corn starch in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over low heat until thickened.

  3. Slice the oranges.

  4. Line the bottom of a pudding dish with the sliced oranges.

  5. Flavor the custard with the juice or grated peel of one orange.

  6. Pour the custard over the lined oranges.

Bake and top

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 10-15 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg whites with 1 tablespoon of sugar until stiff.

  3. Spread the stiff egg whites on top of the baked pudding.

  4. Brown the egg whites slightly.

Optional apple variation

  1. Slice 4 apples.

  2. Simmer the apples in the oven with a little water until tender.

  3. Pour the custard over the apples, flavored with lemon.

  4. Use ½ can of strawberries, peaches, or pineapple in the pudding for different flavors.

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup of butter.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon lemon, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 2 teaspoons vinegar.

  3. Pour boiling berry juice over the mixture to serve with the pudding.

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. Apple + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Orange + peachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as it cooks.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard so it sets softly when cooked.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar, they form a stiff topping that browns lightly.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce.
Oranges
Add bright citrus flavor and juice to the pudding base.

The step that matters

Cook the custard over low heat until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if heated too quickly. Gentle, low heat lets the starch and yolks thicken the milk smoothly.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, corn, orange, peach, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, corn, orange, peach, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes