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Dessert

Delicious Pudding

A baked pudding made with sponge cake pieces soaked in a custard of eggs, milk, sugar, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Delicious 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.

Prepare the cake

  1. Rake the sponge cake into a flat-bottomed pudding dish.

  2. Cut the cake into six or eight pieces, split them, and spread with butter.

  3. Return the pieces to the dish.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, sugar, and flavoring.

  2. Pour the custard mixture over the cake.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes until the cake swells and fills the custard.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + milktop 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 sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Set the custard as they cook, holding the pudding together when baked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which soaks into the cake and gives moisture.
Sponge cake
Provides the structure that absorbs the custard and swells as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cake pieces, helping them stay tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard and balances the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Bake until the cake swells and fills the custard. Egg proteins set with gentle heat, giving a smooth, sliceable custard. Overbaking at high heat can curdle the eggs and make the custard grainy and watery.

“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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