Skip to main content
Dessert

Grape-nut Pudding

A baked pudding made with Grape Nuts, raisins, milk, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Grape-nut 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 base

  1. Boil 1 cup of milk.

  2. Pour the boiled milk over the Grape Nuts.

  3. Add the butter.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Stir in the remaining cup of milk.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar.

  2. Add the beaten yolks to the mixture.

  3. Sift the baking soda and baking powder into the flour.

  4. Stir the sifted mixture into the batter.

  5. Fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) or steam until set.

  2. Serve with caramel sauce.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Grape + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,682 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while beaten whites lighten the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pudding rises and becomes lighter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and brown.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavor.
Grape nuts
Soak up the hot milk, giving the pudding its body and a nutty texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the well-beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten well and folded gently. Stirring them hard deflates the foam, so the pudding rises less and turns denser.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nuts, sugar, milk, raisin, butter, flour, egg. 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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesGrape SherbetGrape Sherbet32 recipesGrapefruit MarmaladeGrapefruit Marmalade16 recipesGrape ButterGrape Butter9 recipes