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Custard Pudding

A sweet milk and egg custard baked in a mold, served with stewed cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Custard Pudding

Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Dissolve the sugar in a plain tin mold, turning it on the heat until it begins to color.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk with the lemon peel for 5 minutes.

  2. While boiling, pour the hot milk over the lightly beaten eggs and sweeten.

  3. Pour the mixture into the mold and place it in a stew-pan with enough water to reach halfway up the mold.

  4. Cook gently without boiling for about 30 minutes until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with stewed cherries around the pudding.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Coagulate when gently heated, setting the custard into a firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set into a smooth, tender custard.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the custard and caramelizes on the mold to form a golden coating.

The step that matters

Cook gently without boiling. Egg proteins set at temperatures below boiling. Boiling or fast heat makes the custard curdle, honeycomb or turn rough, so the water bath should stay below a simmer.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, lemon, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, lemon, egg. 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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