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Dessert

Custard Pudding

A baked custard made with eggs, sugar, milk, and seasonings, cooked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Custard Pudding

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 ↓

Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  2. Stir in the milk and season with peach water or lemon.

  3. Butter a dish that will hold the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish.

  2. Place a pan half full of water in the oven.

  3. Set the pudding dish into the pan of water to bake.

  4. Bake for 45 minutes.

Finish the custard

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the eggs while stirring until nearly cold.

  3. Season and bake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Peach + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, sliceable structure as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the custard tender.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the custard its smooth, soft texture.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot milk over the eggs while stirring. Eggs thicken when heated, so adding hot milk gradually while stirring warms them gently. Pouring too quickly or without stirring can scramble the eggs and leave lumps in the custard.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

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