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Dessert

Semolina Pudding

A baked milk and semolina custard with eggs and sugar, flavored with bay leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Semolina and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 351 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Semolina Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. Combine the milk, salt, and bay leaves in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Sprinkle in the semolina and cook gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Remove the bay leaves and let the mixture cool slightly.

Finish and bake

  1. Stir in the sugar and the egg yolks.

  2. Fold in the stiffly whisked egg whites.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 25 to 30 minutes.

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. Semolina + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + semolinatop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together316 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Semolina
Its starch thickens the milk into a soft, set pudding body as it cooks.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the pudding, while whisked whites add lightness and airy structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the semolina thickens and gives the pudding its creamy texture.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and its molasses notes deepen the flavor.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites whisked to stiff peaks trap air that gives lift. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, so fold gently until just combined to keep the pudding light.

“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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