Skip to main content
Dessert

Iced Pudding

A chilled custard dessert made with milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, whipped cream, candied fruit, raisins, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 334 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Iced Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat 1 pint of milk.

  2. Beat 2 eggs with 6 ounces of sugar in a bowl.

  3. Stir the hot milk into the egg mixture, then return to the heat.

  4. Stir until the mixture thickens, then let it cool.

  5. Flavor the custard with 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Freeze and finish

  1. Freeze the custard, then fold in 1 pint of whipped cream.

  2. Add 6 ounces of finely chopped candied fruit, along with chopped raisins and currants.

  3. Repack the mixture and set it aside to 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. Vanilla + peartop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Vanilla + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pear + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Thicken the custard as they set when heated, giving it body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the eggs thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the texture of the frozen dessert.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and air, making the frozen pudding light and creamy.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture thickens. Eggs thicken when heated, but if the custard gets too hot it can curdle and turn grainy. Stirring steadily and removing it from the heat as it thickens keeps it smooth.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, vanilla, cream, pear, pineapple):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, vanilla, cream, pear, pineapple. 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.

You might also like

Pineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesPineapple PuddingPineapple Pudding72 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes