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Minute Pudding

A quick milk and flour pudding cooked in a basin over heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Heat the milk

  1. Set the milk in a basin of hot water and bring to a boil.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling water to the milk.

  3. Make a smooth paste with the flour and 1 cup of milk.

  4. Mix the paste with the beaten eggs.

  5. Place the basin of milk and water over heat and let it boil once.

Thicken and finish

  1. Stir in the thickening and beat well until smooth.

  2. Cook for 3 more minutes.

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 body.
Eggs
Proteins set during cooking, adding structure and richness to the pudding.
Milk
Forms the main liquid and adds richness and a soft, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the thickening and beat until smooth. Starch clumps when it meets hot liquid before it is evenly dispersed. Beating well while the mixture is hot spreads the starch and eggs evenly, which helps prevent lumps.

“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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