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Minute Pudding

A quick wheat or rye flour pudding cooked with milk, nutmeg, salt, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Minute Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Add the flour, grated nutmeg, and salt, stirring constantly for 1 minute.

  3. Remove from heat and let it cool until lukewarm.

  4. Stir in the beaten eggs.

  5. Return to heat and stir constantly until thickened, then remove as soon as it boils.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together359 recipes

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Wheat or rye flour
Forms the thick body of the pudding as its starch swells in the hot milk.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the flour thickens into a smooth, creamy mixture.
Eggs
Set when heated, adding richness and helping the pudding firm up as it thickens.

The step that matters

Returning the mixture to heat. Once the eggs are in, the pudding must be stirred constantly and removed as soon as it boils. Egg proteins can scramble and curdle if overheated, leaving a grainy texture.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Dillfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, milk, 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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