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Dessert

Cream Pudding

A lemon-flavored custard made with cream, eggs, flour, and preserve, baked and served with sugar and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cream Pudding

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add flour, sugar, and grated lemon rind to the yolks.

  3. Add the cream, whipped and drained through a sieve.

  4. Fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into small deep saucers.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove from the oven.

  4. Add a layer of preserve on each and serve stacked.

  5. Sprinkle with sugar.

  6. Garnish with more whipped cream or meringue.

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

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

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites, folded in stiffly whipped, lighten its texture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, and whipping it adds airy lightness to the pudding.
Flour
Helps the mixture set and hold its shape as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon rind
Adds bright lemon aroma and flavor from the oils in the peel.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the pudding dense instead of light and airy after baking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, flour, egg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, flour, 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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