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Dessert

Custard Puddings

A baked custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and optional rice or Indian spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Custard Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine milk, beaten egg yolks, sugar, nutmeg, and salt.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

Bake

  1. Bake until solid, removing it from the oven before it curdles.

  2. For rice custard, add cooked rice to the mixture and bake for 30 to 45 minutes until browned.

  3. For Indian custard pudding, scald cornmeal in milk, then mix with the other ingredients and bake covered for 2 hours.

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. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Rice + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,196 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rice + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks and whites set the custard into a solid, tender structure as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set into a soft custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the custard tender.
Cooked rice
Adds body and bulk to the custard in the rice custard version.

The step that matters

Removing the custard from the oven. Egg proteins set as the custard heats; overbaking forces them to tighten and squeeze out liquid, so it curdles and turns grainy. Remove it while it is still set but not yet curdled.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, nutmeg, rice, beef):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, nutmeg, rice, beef. 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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