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Dessert

Charlotte Pudding

A sponge cake dessert made with a thickened milk and egg yolk custard, topped with beaten egg whites and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Charlotte Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and cornstarch.

  3. Let the mixture thicken slightly.

  4. Sweeten and flavor to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the sponge cake slices in a pudding dish.

  2. Pour the milk mixture over the sponge cake.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  4. Add lemon flavoring to the beaten egg whites.

  5. Spread the egg whites over the pudding.

  6. Brown the pudding lightly in the oven.

  7. Chill before serving.

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

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

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

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

  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. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture into a rich custard as they set with heat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard holds its shape.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiffness, they form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Sponge cake slices
Soak up the custard and form the body of the pudding.

The step that matters

Let the custard thicken slightly before layering. Cornstarch and egg yolks thicken as they heat; if the custard is poured too early it stays thin and soaks the sponge cake unevenly, leaving a soggy pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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.

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