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Souffles and Puddings

A custard-like pudding made with eggs, milk, flour, cinnamon, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Souffles and Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the eggs with the milk.

  2. Sift the flour into the milk and stir with a wooden spoon until thick.

  3. Continue stirring and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cinnamon and pour the mixture into a dish.

  2. Dot with pieces of butter and serve.

  3. For a richer flavor, add 1 pint of cream before serving.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 structure as they cook with the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour and eggs thicken.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it is stirred and heated.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor as it melts over the surface.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, fuller texture.
Cinnamon stick
Adds a warm aroma to the milk mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring while bringing the mixture to a boil. Flour added to hot liquid can clump and scorch on the bottom of the pan. Constant stirring disperses the starch evenly so the mixture thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps or sticking.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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