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Dessert

Derbyshire Pudding

A baked custard-like pudding made with flour, milk, butter, sugar, lemon rind, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Derbyshire Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard base

  1. Mix flour with milk in a saucepan and boil until thickened.

  2. Let the mixture cool completely.

  3. Beat the butter until creamy and add it to the cooled mixture.

Finish and bake

  1. Stir in the sifted sugar, lemon rind, egg yolks, and beaten egg whites.

  2. Butter a dish and place a thin ornamental paste around the edge.

  3. Pour the pudding mixture into the dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 25 minutes.

  4. Serve hot or cold, with sifted sugar on top.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a stable base that holds the pudding together.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help it set into a custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Trap air and help the pudding rise and become light when baked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs set within.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely. Adding eggs to a hot base can scramble them and cause uneven setting. Cooling first lets the eggs blend smoothly and bake into an even texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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