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Custard Pudding

Custard pudding made by boiling flavored milk, adding eggs, flour, sugar, wine, and nutmeg, then baking until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Custard Pudding

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Flavor the milk

  1. Flavor the milk with lemon peel, cinnamon, and bay leaf.

  2. Boil the flavored milk and strain.

  3. Sweeten the milk to taste.

  4. Cool the milk.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs.

  2. Pour the flavored milk into the beaten eggs.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes.

  5. Take a few spoonfuls of the milk.

  6. Mix the cooled milk with 1 tablespoon flour.

  7. Add the flour mixture to the boiling milk.

  8. Stir until cool.

  9. Beat 4 yolks and 2 whites of eggs.

  10. Strain the mixture.

  11. Stir the strained mixture into the milk.

  12. Add 2 oz of moist sugar, wine, and nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. For a baked version, boil 1 quart of milk until reduced to 1 pint.

  2. Bake for 1 hour or until firm and brown.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable structure as they cook.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a creamy custard.
Flour
Thickens the milk and helps the custard hold its shape.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds a deeper, molasses-like flavor.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the custard.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour must be fully mixed with cool milk first, or it clumps. Stirring it into boiling milk while stirring keeps it smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, cinnamon, egg, sugar, 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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