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Dessert

Custard Pudding

A steamed custard made with milk, eggs, flour, and vanilla, served with raspberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Custard Pudding

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Whisk the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Gradually stir the flour into the eggs.

  3. Add the milk flavored with vanilla and stir well.

  4. Butter a basin that will hold the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the basin and tie a floured cloth over it.

  2. Plunge the basin into boiling water, turning it for a few minutes to prevent the flour from settling.

  3. Boil slowly for 30 minutes.

  4. Turn out of the basin and serve garnished with raspberries.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the egg and milk mixture and helps give the pudding body.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set in, keeping the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Plunge the basin into boiling water and turn it. Flour is heavier than the liquid and settles to the bottom, so turning the basin for the first few minutes keeps it evenly distributed. Boiling slowly, rather than vigorously, keeps the pudding from becoming rough and porous.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, 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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