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Dessert

Boiled Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made by boiling a mixture of cream or milk, eggs, flour, spices, sugar, and salt.

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

Boiled Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream or milk with the beaten eggs, flour, grated nutmeg or cinnamon, sugar, and salt.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin or cloth that can hold it.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with wine sauce.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 as they heat, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and helps hold the pudding's shape while it cooks.
Cream or milk
Provides the liquid base and richness, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savoury spice and salt.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes. Egg proteins set as they heat, so the pudding should cook at a steady, controlled heat. Vigorous boiling can make the eggs curdle or leave the texture spongy and uneven.

“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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