Skip to main content
Dessert

Curd Pudding, or Puffs

A curd pudding made from curdled milk, butter, bread crumb, cream, nutmeg, sugar, and white wine, baked in cups.

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

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curd Pudding, or Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Turn the milk into curd and press the whey out.

  2. Rub the curd through a sieve.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix in the butter, bread crumb, cream, nutmeg, sugar, and white wine.

  2. Butter small cups or pattypans and fill them three-quarters full.

  3. Bake carefully until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweet 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the curd that becomes the body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the set pudding a softer, moister texture.
Bread crumb
Adds body and helps the mixture hold its shape when set.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the mixture.
White wine
Adds acidity and a light flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Bake carefully until set. Egg-free curd mixtures with bread and cream set gently; baking too hot or too long can make them curdle, dry out or puff and collapse, so bake gently and stop as soon as they are firm.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, bread, cream, sugar, white wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Garlicfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, bread, cream, sugar, white wine. 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.

More curd pudding recipes

Boiled 6 See all 23 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes