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Dessert

Pumpkin Pudding

A baked pumpkin custard with butter, milk, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, wine, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Pumpkin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the custard

  1. Warm the butter in the milk.

  2. Beat the sugar into the egg yolks in a bowl.

  3. Add the stewed pumpkin, grated nutmeg, and wine to the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them in last.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pastry-lined baking dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pumpkin + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pumpkin + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the custard, while whipped whites lighten its texture.
Stewed pumpkin
Provides the bulk, moisture, and main flavor of the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that sets into the custard when heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps tenderize the custard.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites last. Whipped whites hold air that gives lightness. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from deflating before the custard is baked and set.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, sugar, egg, nutmeg, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, egg, nutmeg, wine. 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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