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Dessert

Semolina Pudding

A baked semolina custard made with milk, semolina, egg, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Semolina Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk and semolina.

  2. Heat the saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally until it boils and thickens, then remove from heat.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg with the sugar until combined.

  4. Once the semolina mixture is cool, gently stir in the sweetened egg.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a ¾ pint pie dish with butter.

  2. Pour the mixture into the greased pie dish.

  3. Grate nutmeg over the top of the mixture.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Semolina + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Semolina + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the semolina thickens into a pudding.
Semolina
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding its body.
Egg
Adds richness and helps set the pudding as it bakes.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a mild caramel flavour.

The step that matters

Let the semolina mixture cool before adding the egg. If the hot semolina mixture meets the egg directly, the egg can scramble and become grainy. Cooling it first lets the egg blend in smoothly and set evenly in the oven.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, semolina, egg, sugar, butter. 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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