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Dessert

Wheat Crystal Pudding

A baked pudding made from wheat crystals, milk, sugar, egg, vanilla, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Wheat Crystal Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the wheat crystals with a little cold milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Butter a baking dish.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the remaining milk and dissolve the sugar in it.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the crystal paste and boil for 15 minutes, stirring continuously.

  3. Beat the egg and add it along with the vanilla extract.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the dish.

  2. Bake until the top is a nice golden brown.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Wheat + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Wheat crystals
Thicken the milk as they cook, giving the pudding its body and structure.
Egg
Adds richness and helps the pudding set as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the wheat crystals cook in and the custard is made from.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Boil the milk mixture while stirring continuously. Wheat crystals can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pan, and they need steady stirring to swell evenly and thicken without lumps.

“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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