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Dessert

Stanley Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, flour, sugar, eggs, jam, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stanley 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.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until nearly boiling.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold milk.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the hot milk and let it boil.

  4. Pour the mixture into a bowl and beat in the egg yolks and sugar.

  5. Transfer the mixture to a pie dish.

Bake and top

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until firm.

  2. Spread the jam on top.

  3. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  4. Spread the whipped egg whites over the jam.

  5. Sprinkle with sugar.

  6. Return to the oven to set.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 thicken the custard and whites whip into a light, airy meringue topping.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk into a stable, sliceable custard base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and provides richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue stay glossy and stable.
Jam
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity between the custard and meringue.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff and then set gently in the oven; under-whipped or deflated whites will weep and sink into the jam instead of forming a light topping.

“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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