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Dessert

Hasty Pudding

A pudding made by soaking sliced old cake in wine, topping with a custard of milk, eggs, and potato flour, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Hasty Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Dip the sliced cake in wine or sprinkle wine over it.

  2. In a bowl, combine milk, egg yolks, and potato flour, and sweeten to taste.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the custard mixture, then pour it over the cake in a pudding dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add sugar and spread over the custard.

  3. Place in a 350°F (175°C) oven to brown slightly.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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 + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Old cake
Forms the base that soaks up the wine and custard.
Wine
Moistens the cake and adds flavour.
Milk
Provides the liquid and richness for the custard.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard, and beaten whites add lightness to the topping.
Potato flour
Starch that thickens the custard when heated.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard and topping.

The step that matters

Boil the custard mixture. Potato flour is a starch that only thickens fully once it has been heated to boiling. If the custard is not brought to a boil, it stays thin and will not set properly over the cake.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, milk, egg, flour, 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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