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Boiled Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made by boiling eggs, sugar, milk, and butter in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Boiled Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs, separating the whites and yolks.

  2. Add salt, sugar, and milk or cream to the egg mixture.

  3. Butter a tin mold that can hold the mixture.

Cook

  1. Place the mold in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Cover the mold with a piece of muslin, ensuring no water enters.

  3. Boil the pudding for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the mold from the water about 10 minutes before serving.

Serve

  1. Carefully take the pudding out of the mold and serve with wine sauce.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Set the custard into a firm, tender pudding as they cook.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the pudding soft and creamy.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the savory notes of the eggs.

The step that matters

Covering the mold with muslin so no water enters. Water seeping into the mold would dilute the custard and leave it watery and loose. Egg proteins set gently in steam or water heat, so a tight, dry seal keeps the texture smooth and firm.

“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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