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Dessert

Pumpkin Pudding

A baked pumpkin custard made with milk, butter, sugar, eggs, rose water, wine, mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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.

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter in warm milk and stir in the sugar until well combined.

  2. Beat the eggs very light and gradually add them to the mixture, alternating with the pumpkin.

  3. Stir in the rose water, wine, mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg until well mixed.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  3. Rose + macetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together498 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Pumpkin
Adds moisture and body, giving the pudding its bulk and flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a tender crumb.
Milk
Provides liquid that thins the batter and carries the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs gradually. Adding beaten eggs slowly, alternating with the pumpkin, helps keep the mixture smooth and evenly combined so it does not curdle or separate.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, milk, butter, sugar, 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.

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