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Dessert

Minute Pudding

A quick milk-based pudding made by mixing flour, eggs, and milk, then cooking with boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Minute Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald 2 cups of milk in a double boiler.

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup of flour with 1 cup of cold milk, 2 beaten eggs, and ¼ teaspoon of salt until smooth.

Cook

  1. Add 2 cups of boiling water to the hot milk.

  2. When it boils, add the flour and egg mixture.

  3. Stir and beat for 1 minute, then cook for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Serve with lemon sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Flour
Starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Egg proteins set with heat, adding structure and firmness to the pudding.
Milk
Provides richness, moisture and a soft, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and egg mixture to the boiling liquid. Stir and beat as you add it so the flour disperses instead of clumping, and the eggs blend in rather than scrambling. Starch thickens as it heats, so the mixture must stay in motion while it sets.

“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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