Skip to main content
Dessert

Betsy Pudding

A pudding made with milk, breadcrumbs, egg, sugar, jam, and nutmeg, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,685 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Betsy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Spread a good layer of jam in the bottom of a pie dish.

Make the custard

  1. Pour nearly boiling milk over the breadcrumbs.

  2. When cool, stir in the beaten egg.

  3. Pour this mixture gently over the jam.

  4. Grate a little nutmeg over the top.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Breadcrumbs
Soak up the hot milk and thicken into a soft, moist body for the pudding.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set into a soft, sliceable custard as it bakes.
Milk
Softens the breadcrumbs and provides the liquid that becomes the creamy custard.
Jam
Forms a sweet, fruity layer that ends up on top of the baked pudding.

The step that matters

Let the milk cool before adding the egg. Eggs begin to scramble when exposed to very hot liquid, which would leave the custard grainy. Waiting until the mixture is cool lets the egg blend smoothly and set evenly in the oven.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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

More jam pudding recipes

Steamed 8Blackberry 4Roly-Poly 3 See all 47 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes