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Dessert

Custard Pudding

Custard pudding made with eggs, milk, cream, flour, sugar, spices, brandy, baked or boiled, topped with sugar, nutmeg, butter sauce, and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Custard Pudding

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 ↓

Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C) if baking.

  2. Beat yolks and whites of eggs separately.

  3. Mix yolks with milk, cream, and flour to create a batter.

  4. Fold in beaten egg whites, sugar, cinnamon or nutmeg, and brandy or ratafia just before cooking.

  5. Butter a basin or mold to hold the mixture.

Cook

  1. Boil a large saucepan of water and place the basin in it, ensuring the water is boiling when you add the pudding.

  2. Keep water boiling and gently shake basin for several minutes to prevent eggs from settling.

  3. Cook for 30 minutes if boiling, or 20 minutes if baking.

Serve

  1. Turn out pudding and sprinkle with fine sugar and nutmeg.

  2. Serve with melted butter or wine sauce, and garnish with raspberry jam or red currant jelly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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
Beaten yolks and whites set the custard and give it a light, airy structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set into a tender custard.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, smoother texture.
Flour
Thickens the yolk and milk batter so it holds its shape when set.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps give it a tender texture.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling and shaking the basin. Egg proteins set as they heat, so the mixture needs steady heat and gentle shaking to stop the eggs settling and the pudding cooking unevenly or becoming dense at the bottom.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, cream, flour, sugar, brandy, 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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