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Dessert

White Pot

A custard-like dessert made from milk, sugar, spices, eggs, bread crumbs, and butter, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

White Pot

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk with sugar, cinnamon, rose-water, and nutmeg.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then mix in the beaten eggs.

Soak and bake

  1. Pour the mixture over the bread crumbs in a dish.

  2. Let it soak for 2 hours.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes, scattering bits of butter on top.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 when baked, giving it a firm yet tender body.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk mixture to form the body of the pudding.
New milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set and the crumbs absorb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs added to very hot milk can scramble rather than blend smoothly. Cooling the mixture first lets the eggs thicken evenly into a smooth custard when baked.

“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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