Skip to main content
Dessert

Custard Pudding

A sweet custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, and spices, cooked by boiling or baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Custard Pudding

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Flavor the milk

  1. Flavor the milk with lemon peel, cinnamon, and bay leaf.

  2. Boil the flavored milk and strain it.

  3. Sweeten the milk to taste.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs.

  2. Pour the flavored milk into the beaten eggs.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  4. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  5. For a baked version, boil 1 quart of milk until reduced to 1 pint.

  6. Cool a few spoonfuls of the milk.

  7. Mix the cooled milk with 1 tablespoon flour.

  8. Add the flour mixture to the boiling milk and stir until cool.

  9. Beat 4 egg yolks and 2 egg whites.

  10. Strain the beaten yolks and whites.

  11. Stir the strained yolks and whites into the milk.

  12. Add 2 oz moist sugar, 2-3 tablespoons wine, and a little grated nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 1 hour or until firm and brown.

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.

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.

  1. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable structure as they cook.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken and carries the flavorings.
Flour
Thickens the custard and helps keep it smooth and stable.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Stirring the cooled flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not whisked in smoothly, leaving lumps. Cooling the mixture first and stirring constantly keeps the starch dispersed so the custard thickens evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, egg, sugar, flour, 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.

More custard pudding recipes

Apple 27Baked 27Boiled 12Bread 12Fruit 11Chocolate 8 See all 209 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes