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To Make a Batter Pudding to Eat Like Custard

A custard-like pudding made by boiling milk with spices, thickening with flour, and adding beaten eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

To Make a Batter Pudding to Eat Like Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk with the bay leaf, cinnamon, and sugar for 2-3 minutes.

  2. Remove the bay leaf and cinnamon, then mix the flour with a little more milk until smooth.

  3. Thicken the milk with the flour mixture, ensuring it doesn't burn, and set aside to cool.

  4. Beat the eggs and mix them with the cooled milk mixture.

Fill and boil

  1. Butter a basin and dredge it with flour, then pour in the mixture.

  2. Butter a paper and place it on top.

  3. Tie a cloth over the paper.

  4. Boil for 1.5 hours, then let it stand for a few minutes before turning it out onto a dish.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter and sugar.

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. Cinnamon + flourtop 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

Eggs
Set when cooked, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk so the custard holds together rather than running.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs and flour set into a custard.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with the flour mixture. Flour thickens only when heated in liquid, and the starch can scorch on the base of the pan. Stirring keeps the heat even and prevents lumps, giving a smooth custard that sets evenly.

“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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