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Dessert

Savoy Pudding

Savoy pudding is a custard-like dessert made with butter, milk, flour, cream, egg yolks, cheese, flavoring, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Savoy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in boiling milk.

  2. Add sifted flour and work vigorously.

  3. Transfer the mixture to another pan and let it rest for 10 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. Stir in cream, egg yolks, and pressed cheese.

  2. Add flavoring.

  3. Fold in whipped egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a pudding mold.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold.

  3. Cook in a bain-marie for 1 hour at 300°F (150°C).

  4. Unmold and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they trap air and give the pudding a light, risen texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a tender, smooth texture when cooked.
Flour
Forms the starchy base that thickens the milk and gives the pudding body and structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender crumb and smooth mouthfeel.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that hydrates the flour and carries the richness of the pudding.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, making the pudding softer and more luxurious.

The step that matters

Fold in whipped egg whites. Overmixing deflates the whipped whites and loses the air that lightens the pudding. Fold gently so the foam stays intact through baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, flour, cream, egg, cheese. 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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