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Dessert

College Pudding

A light, airy pudding made with eggs, milk, flour, and ammonia, baked in a greased mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

College Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until very light.

  2. Add the salt, milk, and enough flour to create a thin batter.

  3. Beat the mixture hard for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Gently stir in the whisked egg whites without over-beating.

  5. Add the dissolved ammonia and mix gently.

Bake

  1. Butter a cake mold or iron pan.

  2. Pour in the mixture.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until done.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Yolks and whites provide structure and lift, setting into a tender custard-like crumb when baked.
Flour
Gives the batter body so it bakes into a set, sliceable crumb rather than a loose custard.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and helps the pudding set as it bakes.
Carbonate of ammonia
Releases gas as it heats, leavening the batter so it rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Gently stir in the whisked egg whites without over-beating. Egg whites trap air that gives lift. Overbeating after folding in the whites knocks that air out, so the pudding bakes up dense and flat.

“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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