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Dessert

Summer Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with milk, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Summer Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Soak the gelatine in water.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the milk and sugar.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the boiling milk.

  4. Cook until thick, then let it cool slightly.

  5. Add the soaked gelatine and mix well.

Set and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Flavor with vanilla and pour into a mold.

  3. Refrigerate until set, then unmold and serve.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Gelatine
Sets the custard into a firm, sliceable structure once chilled.
Eggs
Thicken the custard when cooked and whipped whites add lightness to the set dessert.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the custard thickens into.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the richness of the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Cook until thick. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins coagulate with gentle heat, but overheating can curdle them into lumps. Cook gently and stop once the custard coats a spoon.

“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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