Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Custard Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Boil the piece of cinnamon in the thick cream.
Add the sugar.
Let it cool.
Stir in the beaten egg yolks.
Heat until thick, but do not boil.
Prepare the cloth
Butter a cloth.
Dust the cloth with flour.
Tie the custard tightly in the cloth.
Boil and serve
Boil for 45 minutes.
Grate sugar over the pudding.
Serve with melted butter and wine.
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.
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,341 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
- Thick cream
- Provides the rich base that sets into a soft, creamy custard.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the custard as they set with heat, giving it body and richness.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the custard taste rounded and balanced.
- Cinnamon
- Flavours the cream as it simmers, adding warm aroma to the custard.
The step that matters
Heat until thick, but do not boil.. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; boiling can scramble them, leaving a grainy, curdled custard instead of a smooth one.
Swap the cinnamon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, egg, butter, flour, wine):
- Nutmegfits about as well
- Cinnamonthe original
- Tarragonfits less well
- Capersfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, butter, flour, 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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