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Dessert

Millet Pudding

A baked millet pudding sweetened with brown sugar and flavored with nutmeg, lemon peel, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Millet Pudding

Why it works: Millet and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 33 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Millet Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the millet.

  2. Boil the millet in milk with nutmeg and lemon peel.

Finish the mixture

  1. When slightly cooled, stir in the butter.

  2. Sweeten with brown sugar.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and egg whites, and the wine or spirits.

Bake

  1. Pour into a buttered dish and bake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Millet + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Millet + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Millet
Forms the body of the pudding, thickening as it cooks in the milk.
Milk
Cooks the millet and forms the custard base that sets during baking.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a tender, creamy texture.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift, helping the pudding set and hold its shape.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks and whites after cooling. If the mixture is too hot when the eggs go in, the yolks can scramble and become grainy. Letting it cool slightly first helps the eggs blend smoothly and set evenly in the oven.

Swap the millet

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, nutmeg, lemon, butter, sugar, egg, wine):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Milletthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, nutmeg, lemon, butter, sugar, egg, wine. 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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