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Dessert

Sugar Flake Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with eggs, sugar, butter, flour, vanilla, and a sauce of sugar, butter, egg, flour, and wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Sugar Flake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  3. Gradually add the granulated sugar to the egg whites.

  4. Beat the yolks just enough to mix thoroughly, then fold them into the egg white mixture.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and sprinkle a little sugar on top.

  6. Bake for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the small cup of sugar, butter, egg, flour or cornstarch, and vanilla in a bowl.

  2. Beat the sauce mixture well.

  3. Add the boiling water and a little wine or brandy to the sauce.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Whipped whites give the pudding its light, airy structure, and the yolks enrich it.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth body to the sauce.
Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and coats the pudding.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until very stiff. Egg whites hold air only when fully whipped and free of yolk or fat. Under-beaten whites collapse, and the pudding loses its light, risen texture during baking.

Swap the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, sauce, butter, flour, wine):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Lemonfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, sauce, butter, flour, wine. 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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