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Dessert

Minute Pudding

A quick milk and flour pudding thickened with eggs, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Minute Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Heat 1½ pints of milk in a pot until boiling.

  2. In a bowl, mix 5 large tablespoons of flour with ½ pint of milk, 1 teaspoon of salt, and ½ grated nutmeg until smooth.

  3. Once the milk boils, stir in the flour mixture.

  4. Boil for 1 minute while stirring constantly, then remove from heat.

  5. Let it cool to lukewarm, then add 3 beaten eggs.

  6. Return to heat and stir constantly until it thickens, then remove as soon as it boils.

Serve

  1. Serve with sauce.

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together359 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 that thickens into the pudding.
Wheat or rye flour
Starch thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding body.
Eggs
Proteins set when gently heated, enriching and firming the pudding.

The step that matters

Return to heat and stir constantly until it thickens, then remove as soon as it boils. Egg proteins can scramble if overheated, and starch needs steady stirring to thicken evenly without lumps or sticking. Removing it promptly stops the eggs from curdling.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, wheat, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Dillfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, wheat, egg. 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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