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Dessert

Bombay Pudding

A custard pudding made with eggs, sugar, butter, wine or brandy, nutmeg, coconut, baked in a puff pastry shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 411 recipes. Both carry beta-pinene, which smells pine, resin. The science ↓

Bombay 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the butter, wine or brandy, nutmeg, and coconut; mix thoroughly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with the puff pastry shell.

  2. Pour the custard mixture into the pastry shell.

  3. Bake until the top is a delicate brown color.

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. Nutmeg + coconuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  2. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 give it structure as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown at the top.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a smoother texture.
Wine or brandy
Adds aroma and a sharp note that balances the sweetness.
Finely grated coconut
Adds moisture, texture and a toasted flavor as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until the top is a delicate brown color. Eggs set as they heat, so overbaking can make the custard grainy and dry, while underbaking leaves it loose. Watch the color and the set rather than only the clock.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, wine, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, wine, nutmeg. 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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