Skip to main content
Dessert

German Pudding

A baked custard-like pudding made with eggs, milk, flour, butter, sugar, wine, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
German Pudding

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

German Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately until very light.

  2. Combine the yolks with the milk, flour, butter, nutmeg, and salt.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together the sugar and softened butter.

  2. Add the egg, wine, and nutmeg, then heat over medium until it comes to a boil.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Whites trapped by beating give the pudding its light, airy structure as it bakes.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk and egg mixture so it sets into a sliceable body.
Milk
Liquid base that cooks with the eggs to form a soft, custard-like texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for the sauce, adding sweetness and a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Fat that adds richness and a tender mouthfeel to both the pudding and the sauce.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Overmixing deflates the whites' trapped air, so the pudding loses its lift and bakes up dense instead of light.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, butter, sugar, wine. 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.

More german pudding recipes

Sauce 18 See all 34 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes