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Dessert

Spanish Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with clarified butter, bread crumbs, milk, sugar, vanilla, eggs, and whipped egg whites, poached in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Spanish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Warm the clarified butter in a stewpan.

  2. Stir in the bread-crumbs until they turn a nice yellow color.

  3. Gradually add the warm milk while stirring.

  4. Cook on the fire until it begins to thicken, then remove from heat.

  5. Vigorously thicken the mixture and add the sugar, some of which should be flavored with vanilla.

  6. Cook for a few more minutes, then pour into another stewpan.

  7. Add the egg yolks and whole eggs to the mixture when cool.

  8. Fold in the whipped egg whites gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered and floured cylinder mold.

  2. Set the mold in a stewpan filled with warm water halfway up the sides.

  3. Poach in a portable oven for one hour.

  4. Turn out onto a dish and mask with vanilla-flavored English 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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Clarified butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender, rich texture.
Bread-crumbs
Provides body and starch that help thicken the milk base into a soft structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens with the crumbs and sets with the eggs.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's flavor balance.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard, adding richness and help it set.
Whole eggs
Add structure as they set during gentle cooking, holding the pudding together.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites must be folded gently so the foam is not deflated; their trapped air gives the pudding lightness, and overmixing would leave it dense.

“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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