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Dessert

Woodford Pudding

A jam-based custard pudding baked with eggs, butter, flour, and spices, served with a brown sugar and egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Woodford Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  3. Add the butter, flour, jam, baking soda dissolved in sour milk, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake slowly until set.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat the brown sugar with the egg yolks and butter until smooth.

  2. Steam the sauce mixture for 30 minutes until thick and creamy, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat, add nutmeg, and adjust flavor with wine or brandy.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and set the pudding's structure as they cook.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda so the pudding rises and turns tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb in the pudding and sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat, giving it a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Steaming the sauce while stirring constantly. Egg yolks can scramble if overheated or left unstirred. Constant stirring over gentle heat lets the sauce thicken smoothly into a custard-like texture.

“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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