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Dessert

Barley Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made with barley, milk, sugar, butter, egg, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Barley Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Mix the barley with the sugar and a little cold milk.

  3. Pour the hot milk over the barley mixture and return to the heat.

  4. Add the butter and a small pinch of salt, stirring until it boils.

  5. Remove from heat and add the yolk of the egg.

  6. Whisk the egg white to a stiff froth and fold it into the mixture once it has cooled slightly.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a small pie dish and pour in the custard.

  2. Grate a little nutmeg on top and bake for 10 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Barley + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Patent barley
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and set.
Egg
Yolk enriches and thickens the custard, while the whisked white adds lightness and airy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the barley swells in and sets into a custard.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps soften the barley as it cooks.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg white. The white must be whisked to a stiff froth and folded in only after the mixture has cooled slightly. If it is too hot, the foam collapses and the pudding loses its lightness; overmixing also deflates the air that gives the texture.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, sugar, butter, 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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