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Curd Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from curdled milk, butter, eggs, lemon peel, nutmeg, and optional ingredients, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Curd Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Turn 2 quarts of milk into curd and drain it off.

  2. Beat the curd with 2 oz of butter until well combined.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the yolks of 6 eggs and the whites of 3 eggs, then add to the curd mixture.

  4. Add a little grated bread or biscuit, 1 teaspoon of grated lemon peel, nutmeg, and pounded peach kernels; mix well.

Bake

  1. Butter a dish and pour the mixture in, creating a crust around the edges.

  2. Bake until well browned.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  5. Nutmeg + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the curd base that gives the pudding its body and moisture.
Eggs
Yolks and whites set the mixture into a custard-like texture when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender texture to the curd.
Grated bread or biscuit
Absorbs liquid and helps give the mixture body.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, lemon, nutmeg, peach, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, lemon, nutmeg, peach, bread. 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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