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Dessert

Millet Pudding

A sweet pudding made from millet, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and wine or spirits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Millet Pudding

Why it works: Millet and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 33 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Millet Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the millet

  1. Wash the millet.

  2. Boil the millet in milk with nutmeg and lemon peel.

Make the pudding and bake

  1. Let it cool slightly, then stir in butter and brown sugar.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and egg whites, and the wine or spirits.

  3. Pour into a buttered dish and bake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Millet + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Millet + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Millet
Softens and thickens in the hot milk, giving the pudding its body and grainy texture.
Milk
Cooks with the millet to form the creamy base that the rest of the pudding sets in.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a tender, sliceable texture when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness, helping the pudding rise and hold its shape in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, moist mouthfeel.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness along with a caramel-like depth and moisture.

The step that matters

Let the millet mixture cool slightly before adding the eggs. Eggs can scramble or curdle when added to very hot liquid. Letting the mixture cool slightly lets the beaten eggs blend in smoothly, giving an even, silky set.

Swap the millet

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Milletthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, nutmeg, lemon, butter, sugar, egg, 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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