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Hasty Pudding

A quick milk and cereal flakes pudding folded with egg whites and baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Hasty Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding

  1. Heat the milk to boiling.

  2. Stir in the cereal flakes and cook for five minutes.

  3. Add the butter and a pinch of salt.

  4. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a dish and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until set.

  2. Serve cold with powdered sugar, cream, and a little grated nutmeg.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cereal flakes cook and soften in.
Ceraline flakes
Thicken the milk as they cook and give the pudding its body.
Whites of eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding a light, firm structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites, which gives the pudding its lift. Stirring hard would deflate the foam and leave a denser result.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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