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Dessert

Almond Pudding

A baked pudding made from milk, flour, blanched almonds, sugar, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk.

  2. Mix the flour with a little milk to form a cream, then stir it into the milk.

  3. Once cooked, remove from heat and let cool.

Bake

  1. Stir in the pounded almonds, salt, sugar, and flavoring.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and whites, mixing well.

  3. Dot the top with bits of butter.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding and carries the other ingredients.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding body.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main almond flavour and a rich, tender texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding structure and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the almonds.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour cream into the milk. Flour must be mixed smoothly with a little cold milk first, then stirred into hot milk and cooked, so starch swells evenly and thickens without lumps.

“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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