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Dessert

Biscuit Pudding

A pudding made by boiling biscuits in milk with lemon peel, butter, sugar, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Biscuit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the biscuits thinly.

  2. Boil them in the milk with the chopped lemon peel.

  3. Mash the mixture.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the warmed butter, sugar, and beaten eggs.

  2. Stir in the brandy.

  3. Bake or boil 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable pudding when cooked.
Biscuits
Provide the bulk and starch that soften in the milk and thicken into the base.
Milk
Softens the biscuits and forms the custard-like body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to its flavour.

The step that matters

Bake or boil until set. Eggs set when heated to roughly 70 to 80°C, so stopping too early leaves a runny centre, while overcooking makes the eggs grainy and weeping.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, milk, butter, sugar, egg, brandy. 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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