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Dessert

Frozen Pudding

A chilled custard dessert with fruit, flavored with vanilla and set in a melon mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Frozen Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the cream and milk in a double boiler.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with sugar and salt.

  3. Add the beaten yolks to the hot milk to make a custard.

  4. Dissolve gelatine in cold milk.

  5. Stir the dissolved gelatine into the custard and strain.

  6. Chill the mixture.

  7. Flavor with vanilla.

  8. Freeze.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cook the fruit in boiling water.

  2. Soak the cooked fruit overnight in syrup.

  3. Add the soaked fruit to the frozen mixture.

Pack and serve

  1. Pack the mixture in a melon mold, cover, and bury in crushed ice and rock salt for at least an hour.

  2. Serve turned from the mold with whipped cream.

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

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

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through their emulsifying proteins.
Thin cream
Provides fat for a smooth, rich texture in the frozen custard.
Gelatine
Sets the custard and helps keep the frozen texture smooth and firm.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the dessert softer.
Fruit
Adds flavor, chew and sweetness after being cooked and soaked in syrup.

The step that matters

Scald the milk and cream in a double boiler, then add the beaten yolks slowly to the hot milk. Adding hot liquid to egg yolks too quickly can scramble them. Gentle, controlled heat in a double boiler lets the yolks thicken the custard smoothly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, milk, egg, sugar, vanilla, raisin, syrup):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, egg, sugar, vanilla, raisin, syrup. 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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