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Dessert

To Boil a Custard Pudding

A boiled custard pudding made with cream, flour, eggs, salt, nutmeg, and sweet wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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To Boil a Custard Pudding

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil a Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Reserve 2-3 tablespoons of the cream.

  2. Mix the reserved cream with 1 tablespoon of flour.

  3. Boil the remaining cream.

  4. Once boiled, remove from heat and stir in the cold cream and flour mixture.

  5. When cool, beat 5 egg yolks and 2 egg whites.

  6. Stir in salt, nutmeg, and sack.

  7. Sweeten to taste.

Cook and serve

  1. Butter a wooden bowl and pour in the mixture.

  2. Tie a cloth over the bowl and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Once cooked, untie the cloth, turn the pudding onto a dish, and pour melted butter 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cream
Provides the rich base that sets into a soft, creamy body when cooked.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture and add richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the pudding set with a softer structure.
Fine flour
Stabilises the cream so it thickens and holds together rather than curdling.
Sack
Adds a sweet wine flavour that gives the pudding aroma and depth.

The step that matters

Stirring the cold cream and flour into the boiled cream. Adding the mixture off the heat and stirring it in smoothly keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the custard thickens without lumps or curdling from the eggs and heat.

“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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