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Dessert

Common Custard Pudding

A simple custard pudding made with eggs, milk, and sugar, optionally served with sweet sauce or stewed fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Common Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Whisk the eggs in a pint basin.

  2. Add enough milk to fill the basin.

  3. Strain the mixture, then flavor and sweeten it with fine sugar.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the pudding very softly for exactly 30 minutes.

  2. Let it stand for a few minutes before serving.

  3. Serve with sifted sugar on top and sweet sauce, or with stewed fruits.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Set the custard into a firm, tender pudding as they cook.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and keeps the custard soft and creamy.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding very softly for exactly 30 minutes. Egg proteins set gently at low heat; a hard boil can curdle the custard and leave it grainy or watery. Timing matters because overcooking makes it tough.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, sugar, sauce, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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