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Dessert

Cheese Curd Pudding

A baked dessert made from milk curd, butter, eggs, biscuits, sugar, candied fruit, almonds, butter, wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Cheese Curd Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the curd

  1. Turn the milk with rennet and drain off the whey.

  2. Beat the curd with ½ pound of fresh butter until well mixed.

  3. Beat the yolks of 6 eggs.

  4. Beat the whites of 3 eggs.

  5. Strain the beaten eggs into the curd.

  6. Grate 2 Naples biscuits or ½ penny roll.

  7. Mix the grated biscuits with the curd.

  8. Sweeten to taste.

Bake

  1. Butter patty pans.

  2. Fill the pans with the mixture.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  4. Once done, turn them out onto a dish.

Decorate and serve

  1. Cut candied citron and orange peel into narrow slips.

  2. Slice blanched almonds.

  3. Decorate the top of the puddings with the citron, orange peel, and almonds.

  4. Pour melted butter, wine, and sugar over the puddings.

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. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the curd with rennet, which becomes the body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the curd into a set custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Beaten to lighten the mixture and give the puddings a softer, airier rise.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Naples biscuits or penny roll
Grated crumbs absorb moisture and help the mixture hold its shape.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs before straining them into the curd. Well-beaten eggs blend evenly into the curd and set into a uniform texture; unbeaten or lumpy egg can leave streaks or dense spots in the baked pudding.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, biscuit, sugar, almond, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, biscuit, sugar, almond, 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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