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Paradise Pudding

A savory pudding made with milk, butter, flour, mace, oysters, egg yolk, cream, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Paradise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and mace, then add the milk and bring to a boil for 2 to 3 minutes.

  3. In a bowl, beat the cream and egg yolk together, then strain into the sauce.

  4. Stir the mixture by the side of the fire for 3 to 4 minutes, ensuring it does not boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the gills from the oysters, cut them into halves or quarters, and stir them into the sauce.

  2. Season to taste and add lemon juice, then remove the mace and serve.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and cooks with the flour to start the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and thickens it gently when kept below boiling.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Oysters
Are the main ingredient, providing the dish's characteristic briny flavour and tender texture.

The step that matters

Stir the custard by the side of the fire without boiling. Egg yolk thickens gently at moderate heat, but if the mixture boils it can curdle and turn grainy, so the sauce must stay below a boil.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, oyster, egg, cream, lemon. 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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