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To Boil a Custard Pudding

A boiled custard pudding made with cream, eggs, flour, and sweet wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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To Boil a Custard Pudding

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil a Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Take 1 pint of cream and reserve 2-3 tablespoons.

  2. Mix the reserved cream with the flour.

  3. Heat the remaining cream until boiling, then remove from heat and stir in the cold cream and flour mixture.

  4. Once cooled, beat the egg yolks and whites.

  5. Stir in salt, nutmeg, and sack.

  6. Sweeten to taste.

Boil and serve

  1. Butter a wooden bowl and pour the mixture in.

  2. Cover with a cloth and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. After boiling, remove the cloth.

  4. Turn the pudding onto a dish.

  5. Pour melted butter over it.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter 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

Cream
Forms the rich, smooth body of the pudding once heated and set.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard, giving it set structure and richness.
Egg whites
Add airiness and lift, helping the pudding rise and hold a lighter texture.
Fine flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the pudding holds its shape.

The step that matters

Heating the cream with the flour mixture. Stirring the cold cream and flour into the boiling cream off the heat helps prevent lumps, giving a smooth base before the eggs are added.

“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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