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Dessert

Pumpkin Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with pumpkin, eggs, sugar, butter, cream, and seasoned with nutmeg and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strain the pumpkin through a sieve.

  2. Boil the cream and set it aside to cool.

  3. Beat the eggs separately.

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs and cooled cream to the butter mixture, then mix in the pumpkin.

  3. Season with nutmeg and lemon rind and juice or extract.

Bake

  1. Bake in a pie crust until set, similar to custard.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as their proteins coagulate, giving the filling its structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the filling.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the creamed butter hold air.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the custard soft and smooth.
Pumpkin
Adds moisture, body and flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Egg proteins set as they heat, and overbaking squeezes out liquid and makes the custard grainy or curdled. Remove it when the centre barely wobbles, since it firms further as it cools.

Swap the pumpkin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, cream, nutmeg, lemon. 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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