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Dessert

Italian Pudding

A layered custard dessert made with Savoy biscuits, peaches, custard, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Italian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the layers

  1. Divide the biscuits and arrange alternate layers of biscuits and peaches in a dish until full.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg, then add the milk and sugar.

  2. Pour the mixture into a custard pan or jug.

  3. Set the pan in a pan of boiling water and stir until it thickens.

  4. Pour the custard over the biscuits and peaches.

  5. Allow it to cool.

Top and serve

  1. Whip the cream until stiff and add a little sugar to it.

  2. Arrange the whipped cream roughly on top.

  3. If desired, color with cochineal.

  4. Serve cold.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Biscuit + peachtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Savoy biscuits
Form the structure of the dish, soaking up the custard as the layers set.
Egg
Thickens the custard as it heats, setting it into a soft, sliceable mass.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and softens the biscuits.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a light, airy topping when whipped.
Peaches
Provide fruity sweetness and moisture between the biscuit layers.

The step that matters

Stir the custard over boiling water until it thickens. Egg proteins set gradually as they heat. Heat too fast or stir too little and the egg can scramble or curdle, while stopping too early leaves the custard runny.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, peach, egg, milk, sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, peach, egg, milk, sugar, cream. 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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