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Dessert

J Hasty-Pudding

A milk-based pudding made with flour, butter, egg, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

J Hasty-Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the thick base

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan over medium heat until it boils.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in flour gradually with a wooden spoon until thick like very thick batter.

  3. Return to heat and boil for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour into a deep dish and dot with small pieces of butter.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix in enough flour to make a stiff paste.

  3. Mince the paste finely and add to a quart of boiling milk.

  4. Stir in salt, cinnamon, sugar, and a walnut-sized piece of butter.

  5. When thickened, pour into a dish and dot with butter on top.

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 + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 that the flour thickens into a pudding.
All-purpose flour
Starch that thickens the milk and gives the pudding its body.
Egg
Binds the flour paste and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the hot milk gradually. Starch granules hydrate and swell evenly only when they are dispersed one by one. Adding flour gradually while stirring off the heat prevents clumps, which would otherwise stay as dry lumps in the finished pudding.

“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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