Skip to main content
Dessert

Pumpkin Pudding

A baked custard made with pumpkin, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, spices, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pumpkin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, melt the butter in warm milk and mix in the sugar.

  2. If using, add the rich cream to the mixture.

  3. Beat the eggs until light and add them gradually to the mixture, alternating with the pumpkin.

  4. Stir in the rose water, wine, mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake for 30 minutes.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pumpkin + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard structure as they cook, giving the pudding its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture to the pudding.
Pumpkin
Provides the main bulk, moisture and flavour of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into during baking.

The step that matters

Alternating eggs with pumpkin. Adding beaten eggs gradually, alternating with the pumpkin, helps them blend smoothly without curdling or lumps, so the baked pudding sets evenly.

Swap the pumpkin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, cream, egg, rose, wine. 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

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesEggless Pumpkin PieEggless Pumpkin Pie17 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes