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Dessert

Hasty-Pudding

A milk-based pudding made with flour, butter, egg, and spices, cooked until thick and served with butter.

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 ↓

Hasty-Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

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

  2. Remove the milk from heat and stir in flour gradually with a wooden spoon until it is thick, like a very thick batter.

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

  4. Pour the mixture into a deep dish.

  5. Dot the dish with small pieces of butter.

Add the egg and finish

  1. Beat the egg in a separate bowl.

  2. Mix the beaten egg with enough flour to make a stiff paste.

  3. Mince the paste finely.

  4. Add the minced paste to a quart of boiling milk.

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

  6. Stir until thick.

  7. Pour the mixture into a dish.

  8. Dot the top with butter.

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 base that the flour thickens into a pudding.
Flour
Thickens the milk and gives the pudding its body and structure.
Egg
Binds the flour into a stiff paste and adds structure to the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk and cinnamon.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour gradually. Flour added gradually while stirring disperses evenly in the hot milk, so its starch thickens smoothly. Dumping it in at once forms lumps that are hard to remove.

“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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