Name: Puddings
Ingredients: 2 quarts milk; 2 ounces butter; 4 ounces sugar; 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon or nutmeg

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 ↓

Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

2 quarts milk
2 ounces butter
4 ounces sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon or nutmeg

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
In a deep dish, combine the milk, butter, sugar, and cinnamon or nutmeg, and mix the ingredients well.

Bake

Bake in the preheated oven for about 2 hours.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,784 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Milk: Forms the liquid base that slowly thickens and sets into a custard as it bakes.
Butter: Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and smooth texture in the baked pudding.
Sugar: Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly at the surface.
Cinnamon or nutmeg: Adds warm aromatic flavor to the milk base.

“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.