Skip to main content
Dessert

Saratoga Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, eggs, flour, sugar, and flavored with lemon peel or nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Saratoga 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.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the flour with a small amount of cold milk until it reaches the consistency of thick cream.

  2. Boil the remaining milk and pour it hot over the flour mixture, stirring continuously.

  3. Add the salt and sugar to taste, then let the mixture cool.

  4. Once cooled, beat in the two eggs until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a baking dish with butter and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Grate lemon peel or nutmeg over the top.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 35 to 40 minutes.

  4. Let it cool for 15 minutes before serving.

  5. It can be enjoyed cold with fruit.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

Flour and butter 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
Bind the custard and help it set firm as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the custard holds its body when baked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gives it its creamy texture.

The step that matters

Pour the hot milk over the flour mixture while stirring continuously. Stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed so it thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps. Adding the milk gradually to the flour mixture helps it hydrate evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes