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Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A steamed milk and egg yolk pudding flavored with vanilla and sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a mold or basin that will hold the mixture.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk with the vanilla pod until just boiling.

  2. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks and gradually pour the hot milk into them, stirring briskly to prevent curdling.

  3. Add the cream and sugar to the mixture and stir well.

  4. Pour the mixture back into the buttered mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the mold with buttered paper and tie a cloth over it.

  2. Place the mold in a pot of boiling water and steam for 1 hour.

  3. Let it stand for 5 minutes before turning it out.

  4. Serve garnished with preserved barberries or a rich fruit syrup.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Yolks thicken the custard as they set, giving the pudding its structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that sets with the eggs into a tender custard.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, smoother texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Whisking the hot milk into the yolks. Adding hot milk too quickly can scramble the egg yolks and cause curdling. Pouring gradually while stirring briskly tempers the eggs so the custard stays smooth.

“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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