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Dessert

Curd Milk Pudding

A pudding made with eggs, lemon peel, currants, curds, and bread crumbs, boiled in a cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Curd Milk Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a basin, combine the eggs, grated lemon peel, currants, curds, and bread crumbs.

  2. Place the mixture in a cloth and boil for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn out the pudding 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Currant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding body and structure.
Curds
Add richness and moisture to the pudding.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout.

The step that matters

Boiling in a cloth. The cloth must be secured loosely enough for the pudding to swell, yet tightly enough to hold its shape. If the water stops simmering, the pudding will be heavy and undercooked in the centre.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, bread. 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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