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Dessert

Paste Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, flour, butter, eggs, sherry or brandy, raisins, and sugar, lined with pie paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Paste Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it reaches a boiling point.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with a small amount of cold milk to form a paste.

  3. Gradually add the flour paste to the boiling milk, stirring continuously for a few moments.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Stir in the butter, beaten eggs, sherry or brandy, and raisins.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish lined with pie paste.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until the pudding rises in the middle.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 add richness and structure as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens and sets into the custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and concentrated fruit flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the flour paste to the boiling milk. Flour clumps if it is added without being mixed smooth in cold milk first, and the mixture must be stirred while it thickens so the starch cooks evenly into a smooth custard.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Apricotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, egg, sherry, 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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