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Dessert

Custard Pudding Boiled

A boiled custard pudding made with cream, eggs, flour, nutmeg, salt, and sugar, served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Custard Pudding Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs well in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the cream, flour, grated nutmeg, salt, and sugar until combined.

  3. Butter a cloth and pour the batter into the center.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the cloth securely and place it in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours.

  3. Serve with melted butter.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its body and structure.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, producing a soft, tender custard texture.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds its shape when boiled.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely. If the cloth is loose, water can seep into the pudding and make it soggy and watery. A snug tie keeps the batter contained so it cooks through as a firm custard.

“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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