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Dessert

A Fixe Plain Baked Pudding

A baked pudding made from milk, flour, butter, sugar, eggs, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

A Fixe Plain Baked Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a pot, heat the milk with the bay leaves until it boils slightly.

  2. Whisk in the flour and salt to create a thick hasty pudding.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the butter and sugar until melted.

Assemble and bake

  1. Beat the eggs and egg whites together, then mix into the pudding mixture.

  2. Line a baking dish with puff pastry and pour the mixture in.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Set the custard and add richness and structure as the pudding bakes.
Egg whites
Add protein that helps the pudding set and hold its shape.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk into a stiff, hasty pudding base.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Whisking the flour into the hot milk. Flour must be whisked in smoothly while the milk is hot so that starch can swell evenly and thicken the base without lumps. Adding it too fast or unevenly can leave clumps that do not smooth out during baking.

“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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