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Minute Pudding

A quick milk pudding made with flour, 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

Make the base

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

  2. Add flour, nutmeg, and salt.

  3. Stir constantly for 1 minute.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool until lukewarm.

  5. Stir in the beaten eggs.

Cook and thicken

  1. Return to heat and stir constantly until thickened.

  2. 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
Provides the main structure as its starch swells and thickens the milk.
Eggs
Their proteins set when heated, firming the pudding and adding richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs enrich.

The step that matters

Remove as soon as it boils.. Egg proteins set when heated and can curdle or turn grainy if the mixture overheats, so it should be taken off the heat once it reaches a boil.

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.

More minute pudding recipes

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