Skip to main content
Dessert

A Black Cap Pudding

A pudding made with butter, flour, milk, eggs, lemon peel, mace, nutmeg, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Black Cap Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grease your baking pots well.

  3. Melt the butter in the oven.

  4. Remove from the oven, stir, and let cool.

Make the batter

  1. Add the milk, eggs, lemon peel, mace, nutmeg, and sugar to the cooled mixture.

  2. Stir in the brandy.

  3. Pour the batter into the prepared pots.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30 minutes until hot and set.

  2. Serve with melted butter.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, and is melted into the base before the liquids go in.
Flour
Thickens the base and gives the pudding structure as it sets.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a tender custard-like texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding its firm, custard-like structure.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Let the butter mixture cool before adding the milk and eggs. If the melted butter and flour base is still very hot, it can scramble the eggs or cause uneven setting. Cooling it first keeps the batter smooth so it sets evenly in the oven.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, lemon, nutmeg, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipes