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Dessert

Semolina Pudding

A sweet pudding made with semolina, milk, sugar, egg, and flavouring, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Semolina and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 351 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Semolina Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Add the semolina and cook gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a bowl and add the sugar and a few drops of flavouring.

  4. Separate the egg, adding the yolk to the bowl and whipping the white to stiff peaks.

  5. Fold the egg white into the mixture gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a greased pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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. Semolina + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Semolina + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together316 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Semolina
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Egg
The whipped white adds lightness, and the yolk enriches the set pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the semolina swells in and sets.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg white. Whipped egg white traps air, which gives lightness. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the foam and leaves the pudding dense.

“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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