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Dessert

Danish Pudding

A milk pudding made with eggs, flour, sugar, butter, wine, and nutmeg, served with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Danish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Let the milk cool until almost cold.

  3. Beat the eggs with the flour for 1 hour.

  4. Mix the cooled milk and sugar with the egg mixture.

  5. Tie the mixture in a well-floured cloth.

  6. Boil the tied mixture for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter.

  2. Mix the melted butter with sugar, wine, egg yolk, and nutmeg.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Eggs
Set the pudding and give it a firm, custard-like body as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the egg and milk mixture so it holds together when boiled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a soft, creamy pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the sauce, balancing its sweetness.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture in a well-floured cloth. The floured cloth forms a dry skin on the outside of the pudding, so it keeps its shape and does not stick to the cloth during boiling. Loose or poorly floured wrapping can let water in and cause the pudding to break apart.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour, sugar, butter, sauce, wine. 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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