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Dessert

Hasty Pudding

A simple milk pudding thickened with flour, butter, sugar, and nutmeg.

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 ↓

Hasty Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Thicken the milk

  1. Boil the milk with cinnamon or laurel leaves.

  2. While boiling, shake in the flour and stir until it thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a deep dish.

  2. Stir in the butter and sugar.

  3. Grate nutmeg over the top.

  4. Add eggs while stirring into the thickened milk.

  5. Do not cook over the fire after adding.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs enrich.
Flour
Starch swells in the hot milk, thickening it into a pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Moist sugar
Provides sweetness and a mild molasses flavour.
Eggs
Proteins set gently in the milk, adding body and richness.

The step that matters

Add eggs while stirring into the thickened milk. Constant stirring spreads the eggs evenly so they don't clump. Keeping the pudding off the heat afterward lets the egg proteins set gently instead of scrambling or curdling.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, 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.

More milk pudding recipes

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