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Dessert

Bain-marie Pudding

A custard pudding steamed in a bain‑marie, served with a fruit‑juice sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Bain-marie Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine the milk and sugar in a clean saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture until it is reduced to 1 pint.

  3. Set aside ½ cup of the sweetened milk for the sauce.

  4. Once the milk is nearly cool, gradually mix in the egg yolks, then the egg whites.

  5. Strain the mixture into a mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the mold for 30 minutes in a saucepan with boiling water, ensuring no water enters the mold.

  2. Let the pudding stand for a few minutes before unmolding.

  3. Heat the reserved milk with the fruit juice until boiling.

  4. Stir in a little cream.

  5. Pour the sauce over the pudding.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Egg yolks and whites set the custard into a firm, sliceable pudding as it steams.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the custard and the sauce, giving a soft, creamy texture.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and sauce and adds body to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the mold gently without water entering. Egg custard sets through gentle heat; boiling water getting into the mold would make the surface pocked and the texture grainy or watery. Keeping the water outside the mold lets the custard cook evenly.

“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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