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Dessert

Frozen Pudding

A chilled dessert made with milk, sugar, flour, gelatin, cream, wine, and candied cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Gelatin and cream match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Frozen Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Beat together the flour and ¼ cup of sugar, then stir the mixture into the boiling milk.

  3. Cook for 20 minutes.

  4. Add the gelatin that has been soaking in water for 1 hour.

  5. Set aside to cool.

Freeze

  1. Mix in the remaining sugar, wine, and cream.

  2. Freeze for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the cherries.

  4. Finish freezing.

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. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the pudding has body rather than running thin.
Gelatin
Sets the mixture and gives the frozen pudding a firm, smooth texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, producing a softer, creamier frozen texture.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the pudding and lowers the freezing point, keeping it softer when frozen.
Candied cherries
Add sweetness, chew and flavour to the frozen pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour clumps if added to hot liquid without being well beaten with sugar and stirred constantly, leaving lumps that the pudding cannot smooth out later.

“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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