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Dessert

Cheese Pudding

A baked cheese and bread crumb custard made with milk, butter, eggs, cheese, mustard, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese 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 base

  1. Heat the milk and melt the butter in it.

  2. Mix together the grated cheese, bread crumbs, a little mustard, and salt.

  3. Add the milk and beaten egg yolks.

Fold and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Gently fold the beaten whites into the mixture.

  3. Bake in a greased pie dish at 350°F (175°C) for twenty minutes.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the custard, while whipped whites lift the pudding as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the warm milk and butter to give the pudding its body.
Cheese
Provides the main flavour and, as it melts, adds richness and a savoury set.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that moistens the crumbs and cooks into a soft custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold the beaten whites into the mixture. Egg whites trap air when whipped to stiff froth, and that air expands in the oven to lift the pudding. Folding gently keeps the bubbles intact; stirring or beating them back down leaves a dense, flat result.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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