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Dessert

Quaking Pudding

A custard pudding made with cream, eggs, flour, sugar, nutmeg, cooked in a butter‑greased cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Quaking Pudding

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Quaking Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the cream and let it cool until almost cold.

  2. Beat the eggs for 15 minutes.

  3. Mix the beaten eggs with the cream.

  4. Add sugar and nutmeg.

Boil and serve

  1. Grease a cloth with butter.

  2. Tie the cloth up securely.

  3. Boil the pudding in the cloth for 1 hour.

  4. Turn the pudding out.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cream
Provides richness and moisture, giving the pudding its smooth, tender body.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the pudding structure and a firm, sliceable texture.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the mixture and helps hold the pudding together as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keep the cream cool before mixing with the eggs. Adding eggs to very hot cream can start to scramble them, producing a grainy texture instead of a smooth custard. Letting the cream cool until almost cold, as the method says, helps the eggs blend in evenly.

“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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