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Dessert

American Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, rice flour, eggs, butter, lemon rind, nutmeg, brandy, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

American Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Scald 1 pint of new milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, stir 3 tablespoons of rice flour into 1 cup of milk until smooth.

  3. Stir the rice flour mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Add ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon butter, the rind of 1 lemon, ¼ teaspoon nutmeg, and ⅓ cup brandy; mix well.

  5. Stir in 3 tablespoons of brown sugar.

Bake

  1. Beat 5 eggs until light and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Butter a baking dish and pour the mixture in.

  3. Bake until set, similar to 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 and add richness and structure.
Rice flour
Thickens the hot milk so the mixture becomes smooth and body-rich.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that sets into a custard.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, spirited flavour.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny centre while overbaking can make the custard grainy and weep liquid. Judge by a gentle wobble in the centre rather than a fixed time.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rice, flour, butter, nutmeg, brandy, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, flour, butter, nutmeg, brandy, sugar. 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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