Skip to main content
Dessert

75 Egg Cream Pudding

A custard pudding topped with meringue, flavored with vanilla and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

75 Egg Cream Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk, egg yolks, vanilla, cornstarch, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened into a custard.

Make the meringue

  1. Beat egg whites in a separate bowl until soft peaks form.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

  3. Flavor the frosting with lemon juice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the custard into a pudding dish and top with the meringue frosting.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the meringue is lightly browned.

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. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets when thickened.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness to the pudding.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard when heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the egg whites.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the meringue topping.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whites, giving a stable, glossy meringue.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil while stirred constantly; stopping early leaves the custard thin, and stirring prevents the egg yolks from scrambling on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes