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 ↓
Custard 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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the custard
Mix the flour with the milk in a bowl.
Add the well-beaten egg yolks, rose water, butter, nutmeg, and sugar.
Pour the mixture into a dish lined with puff pastry.
Bake and serve
Bake for 30 minutes.
Sift a little sugar over the pudding before serving.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,067 recipes
Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
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
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the custard as they set and add richness and a smooth texture.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the egg yolks set into a custard.
- Flour
- Stabilizes the custard so it sets more firmly and does not weep.
- Butter
- Adds fat for a richer flavour and softer texture.
The step that matters
Pour the mixture into the pastry-lined dish and bake. Egg yolks set at moderate heat; if the oven is too hot the custard can curdle or become grainy, and it needs to bake until just set in the centre.
Swap the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, egg, rose, butter, sugar):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegthe original
- Allspicefits less well
- Gingerfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, rose, butter, sugar. 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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