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Dessert

Baked Puddings

A sweet baked pudding made with water, brown sugar, butter, flour or breadcrumbs, eggs, and nutmeg or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. In a pot, combine water and brown sugar; cook until reduced to a smooth pulp.

  2. Stir in butter, flour (or bread-crumbs), and beaten eggs.

  3. Grate in nutmeg or add cinnamon for flavor.

Bake

  1. Pour mixture into a baking dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 45 minutes.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour 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

Brown sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, once cooked down, adds a deep caramel-like flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender, smooth texture.
Flour or bread-crumbs
Adds body so the mixture holds together rather than running loose.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set on baking to give the pudding its structure.

The step that matters

Cooking the water and sugar to a smooth pulp. Cooking the sugar and water down concentrates the sweetness and dissolves the sugar fully, so the finished pudding is smooth rather than grainy. Stopping too early leaves a thin, watery base.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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