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Dessert

Minute Pudding

A quick pudding made from milk, water, flour, salt, and eggs, boiled and served with vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Minute Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Set the milk in a basin of hot water and bring it to a boil.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling water to the milk.

Make the thickening

  1. Mix the flour with ½ cup of milk to make a smooth paste.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them into the flour paste.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the basin with the milk and water over heat and let it boil once.

  2. Stir in the thickening and beat well until smooth.

  3. Cook for 3 more minutes.

  4. Serve with vinegar sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 pudding and contributes richness and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving the pudding body.
Eggs
Add structure and richness as their proteins set during cooking.

The step that matters

Stir in the thickening and beat well until smooth. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Beating the mixture until smooth disperses the starch so it thickens evenly without lumps.

“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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