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Dessert

Spanish Pudding

A gelatin-based dessert made with milk, eggs, sugar, and a pinch of salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Spanish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat a small amount of milk.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in the heated milk.

  3. Beat the egg yolks.

  4. Add 1 cup of sugar.

  5. Combine the yolk mixture with the boiling milk.

  6. Beat the egg whites.

  7. Add the remaining cup of sugar.

  8. Stir the beaten egg whites into the milk mixture. Stir constantly.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into molds.

  2. Let it stand overnight.

  3. Serve with whipped cream.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the milk and whites, beaten, add a light airy structure to the pudding.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid milk mixture so it holds its shape when unmolded.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs and gelatine set into a creamy pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the beaten egg whites.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten egg whites into the milk mixture. Stirring constantly keeps the delicate beaten whites from deflating and clumping, so the pudding stays light and evenly textured as it cools and sets.

“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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