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Dessert

Diplomatic Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, eggs, breadcrumbs, corn starch, currants, and sugar, served with hot custard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Diplomatic Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk by placing the container in hot water, heating until scalding.

  2. Pour the mixture over the beaten eggs and sugar, then add the corn starch.

  3. Fold in the dredged currants.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Turn out the pudding and pour a cup of hot custard over it for sauce, flavored with vanilla or another essence.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Bread + corntop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together547 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk to give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid so the pudding holds its shape rather than turning watery.
Currants
Provide tart, fruity pockets of flavour that contrast with the sweet base.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its tender texture.

The step that matters

Pouring the mixture into the mold and boiling. Cornstarch and eggs must be heated enough to thicken and set, but boiling too hard can make the texture rough or cause the pudding to break apart. Keep the water at a steady simmer and check that the mold is well sealed so water stays out.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, bread, corn, 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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