Skip to main content
Dessert

Hasty-baked Pudding

A baked pudding made with flour, milk, butter, powdered sugar, lime rind, eggs, brandy, and bitter almond paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hasty-baked Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. In a clean saucepan, bring 1 pint of milk and a small pinch of salt to a boil.

  2. Quickly stir in 2 ounces of flour and keep stirring over gentle heat for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a bowl and let it cool slightly.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix in 2 ounces of fresh butter, 3 ounces of powdered sugar, the grated rind of 1 lime, 4 eggs, and ½ cup of brandy or orange‑flower water.

  2. Add the pounded bitter almonds to the mixture.

  3. Bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Lime + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  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

Flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a stiff base that holds the pudding together.
Eggs
Set on baking to give the pudding its structure and a tender, custard-like body.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture and a softer crumb.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and dissolves easily into the warm mixture.
Pounded bitter almonds
Contribute a distinct nutty, almond aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the boiling milk. Flour must be added quickly and stirred constantly over gentle heat; otherwise it clumps into lumps instead of forming a smooth, evenly thickened base.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter, sugar, egg, brandy, almond. 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.

You might also like

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipes