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Dessert

Minute Pudding

A quick milk and flour pudding flavored with sugar and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Minute Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. Sift the flour into a bowl.

  2. Take enough milk from the quart to wet the flour and make a smooth paste.

Cook the pudding

  1. Heat the remaining milk in a pot until it boils.

  2. Add the flour paste and salt to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs and keep stirring until thoroughly cooked.

  4. If using a double boiler, it takes about 15 minutes to cook.

  5. If the pudding gets too stiff, add a little milk.

Flavor and serve

  1. Flavor with sugar.

  2. Flavor with nutmeg.

  3. Serve with cream.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells when heated, giving the pudding body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs set into.
Eggs
Set when heated and add richness and a tender, custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the cooked milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Keep stirring after the eggs go in. Egg proteins set when hot, so if the pudding is not stirred while it cooks, the eggs can curdle or form lumps. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, egg, sugar, cream):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, sugar, cream. 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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