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Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made by boiling flavored milk, mixing with eggs and flour, and 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

Make the flavored custard

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

  2. Sweeten the milk to taste.

  3. Beat the eggs and pour the flavored milk into them.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mold and boil for 1 hour.

Make the baked version

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

  2. Take a few spoonfuls of the milk, cool it, and mix with 1 tablespoon of flour.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the boiling milk and stir until cool.

  4. Beat 4 egg yolks and 2 egg whites, strain, and stir into the milk.

  5. Add 2 oz of moist sugar, 2 or 3 spoonfuls of wine, and a little grated nutmeg.

  6. 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 texture as they cook.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying the flavorings and setting with the eggs.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the baked custard holds its body.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour must be cooked in hot liquid to thicken smoothly; adding it lumpy or undercooked leaves a pasty texture. Egg mixtures also set best when heated gently, since high heat can curdle them.

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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