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Dessert

Custard Pudding

A baked custard made with milk, cream, eggs, spices, and brandy, served hot with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Custard Pudding

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk and cream with cinnamon, lemon peel, and nutmeg for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

  3. In a bowl, beat the eggs and flour together.

  4. Add the cooled milk and cream mixture and the brandy to the eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a dish and line the bottom and rim with puff pastry.

  2. Strain the custard into the prepared dish.

  3. Bake for about 20 minutes until set.

  4. Serve hot, sprinkled with fine sugar.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Coagulate on heating to set the custard into a sliceable structure.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a smooth, soft texture.
Milk
Provides liquid and milk proteins that set with the eggs to form the custard.
Flour
Stabilises the custard so it holds its shape and is less likely to curdle.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Let the milk and cream mixture cool before adding it to the eggs. Adding hot liquid to beaten eggs can scramble them. Cooling the mixture first lets the eggs thicken gently and evenly into a smooth custard.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, flour, brandy):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, flour, brandy. 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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