Skip to main content
Dessert

Delicate Pudding

A light, butter-based pudding made with flour, milk, eggs, sugar, and bread crumbs, baked until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Delicate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook in the hot milk, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens.

  3. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl.

  4. Add the sugar to the eggs and stir into the hot mixture.

  5. Stir in the bread crumbs.

Bake

  1. Turn the mixture into individual molds that are carefully buttered and dredged with sugar.

  2. Bake until firm.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the pudding.
Flour
Thickens the scalded milk into a structure that holds the custard together.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding its firm body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps brown the molded surface.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and stay light.

The step that matters

Cook the flour into the hot milk until thickened. Flour must be stirred constantly in the hot milk so its starch swells and thickens evenly; if it is left to sit, lumps form and the base stays thin or grainy, weakening the pudding's structure.

“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.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes