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Dessert

Curd Puddings, or Puffs

A baked curd pudding made with milk, butter, bread crumb, cream, nutmeg, sugar, white wine, and optional orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curd Puddings, or Puffs

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 curd

  1. Turn the milk into curd and press the whey from it.

  2. Rub the curd through a sieve.

Mix and fill

  1. Mix in the butter, bread crumb, cream, grated nutmeg, sugar, and white wine.

  2. Butter small cups or pattypans and fill them three-quarters full with the mixture.

  3. Add a few drops of orange-flower water if desired.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set and lightly browned.

  2. Serve with a sweet sauce on the side.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Curdles to form the body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender, moist texture.
Bread crumb
Soaks up liquid and helps the mixture set with a softer structure.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, making the texture smoother.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and promotes light browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Pressing the whey from the curd. Leftover whey adds excess liquid, so the pudding may not set firmly. Thoroughly draining the curd gives a denser, sliceable texture after baking.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, bread, cream, nutmeg, sugar, white wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, bread, cream, nutmeg, sugar, white 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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