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Dessert

Ladywell Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with flour, milk, sugar, egg, sherry, and nutmeg, baked in a buttered dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Ladywell Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix flour and nutmeg with enough cold milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add sugar to taste, keeping in mind to avoid excess sweetness for rheumatic subjects.

  3. Pour in boiling milk and stir well.

  4. Once cooled, add the beaten egg and sherry.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish and bake for 30 minutes.

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

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

  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. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard as it cooks and sets.
Egg
Adds structure, helping the pudding set firm when baked.
Sherry
Adds a sharp, aromatic flavour that balances the sweetness.
Milk
Forms the body of the pudding, providing moisture and creaminess.

The step that matters

Stir the flour paste smooth before adding boiling milk. Flour lumps form if it is not fully blended with cold milk first. Adding it to hot milk while still clumped makes the custard grainy, so a smooth paste is needed before pouring in the boiling milk.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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