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Dessert

College Pudding

A light, airy pudding made from eggs, milk, flour, and ammonia, baked in a buttered mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

College Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Add salt, milk, and enough flour to create a thin batter.

  3. Beat the mixture hard for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Gently fold in the whisked egg whites without over-mixing.

  5. Stir in the dissolved ammonia.

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a cake mold or iron pan.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the mold.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until done.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Whites trap air for lift, while yolks add richness and help set the structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that turns the flour into a batter and adds moisture.
Flour
Forms the structure that sets around the air and gas, giving the pudding its body.
Carbonate of ammonia
Releases gas as it heats, leavening the batter so it rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold whipped air that gives the pudding its lift. Vigorous mixing at this stage knocks that air out, so the pudding rises less and turns dense.

“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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