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Dessert

Custard Pudding

Custard pudding made with milk, cream, flour, eggs, bitter almonds, brandy, nutmeg, sugar, and boiled in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Custard Pudding

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Custard Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Mix 5 tablespoons of cream or rich milk with 2 large tablespoons of fine flour.

  2. Boil the remaining milk with broken bitter almonds for flavor.

  3. Strain the boiled milk and stir it into the cold milk and flour mixture.

  4. Let it cool.

  5. Beat 8 egg yolks and 4 egg whites and add them to the mixture.

  6. Stir in ⅓ cup of brandy or white wine, 1 teaspoon of powdered nutmeg, and ½ cup of sugar.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a large bowl or mold and pour in the mixture.

  2. Tie a cloth tightly over the bowl.

  3. Place the bowl in a pot of boiling water.

  4. Boil for 2 hours, replenishing the pot with hot water as needed.

  5. Let the pudding cool before turning it out.

  6. Serve with butter and sugar mixed to a cream and flavored with lemon juice or orange.

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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and enrich it, giving a set, creamy texture.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness so the pudding holds its shape when set.
Fine flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard sets firmly instead of runny.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its tender, moist texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a custard.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 hours in the water bath. The bowl must stay in gently boiling water for the full time, topping up with hot water, so the egg custard cooks through evenly. Letting the water drop too low can leave the centre under-set.

“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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