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Dessert

Hartford Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale cake, wine, eggs, sugar, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Hartford Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour ⅓ cup of wine over the stale cake.

  2. Beat 3 eggs with 3 tablespoons of sugar.

  3. Pour 1 pint of boiling milk over the egg mixture and stir well.

  4. Pour the mixture over the cake and beat it well.

Steam

  1. Steam in a mold for 1 hour and 15 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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Wine + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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

Stale cake
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it steams.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the pudding its structure and a custard-like texture.
Milk
Provides moisture and, once heated, helps the eggs form a soft, tender set.
Wine
Softens the cake and adds a light flavour to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the eggs and wine.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling milk into the eggs slowly while stirring. Adding very hot milk to eggs too quickly can scramble them. Stirring as you pour gently warms the eggs so they thicken smoothly into the custard rather than setting in lumps.

“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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