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Dessert

Custard Pudding, Baked, Without Crust

A baked custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, and optional flavorings, finished with grated nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,685 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Custard Pudding, Baked, Without Crust

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk with the sugar and bay leaf or flavoring.

  2. If using lemon or orange peel, cut it thinly and add it to the milk.

  3. If using essence, add it after the milk has cooled.

  4. Beat the eggs in a bowl and gradually add the milk while continuing to beat.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased dish.

  2. Bake in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C) until set, about 30-40 minutes.

  3. Grate a little nutmeg over the top before serving.

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 + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  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 + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Coagulate on heating to set the custard into a soft, sliceable structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture that the eggs set into a tender custard.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and flavor to the milk base.

The step that matters

Bake in a cool oven until set. Egg proteins set gently at low heat. A hot oven can overcook the outside and cause curdling or a rubbery, watery texture, so the custard should be checked for set rather than baked for a fixed time alone.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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

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