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Dessert

A Boiled Milk Pudding

A simple boiled milk pudding made with milk, flour, butter, salt, eggs, and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Boiled Milk Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the flour, butter, and salt.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Beat in the eggs until well combined.

  5. Tie the mixture tightly in a cloth.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter as sauce.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it sets into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks, giving the pudding structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a softer, smoother texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs set.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before beating in the eggs. Adding eggs to very hot liquid can scramble them, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, well-combined mixture that sets evenly.

“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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