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Dessert

Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made with milk, cream, eggs, spices, and brandy, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Prepare 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. Beat the eggs and flour together until well combined.

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

Bake and serve

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

  2. Strain the custard into the dish and bake for about 20 minutes.

  3. Serve hot with melted butter, wine, and sugar poured over it.

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
Set the custard as they cook, giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the custard, providing moisture and a soft texture.
Cream
Adds fat, making the custard richer and smoother in texture.
Flour
Stabilises the egg custard, helping it hold together without curdling.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the custard base.

The step that matters

Strain the custard into the dish and bake for about 20 minutes. Egg custards set through gentle heat; if baked too hot or too long, the eggs over-coagulate, turning grainy and watery as they curdle.

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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