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Dessert

Derbyshire Pudding

A steamed or baked pudding made with milk, flour, sugar, almonds, lemon rind, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Derbyshire Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk.

  2. In a bowl, mix ½ cup cold milk with 1 heaping tablespoon of flour.

  3. Pour the hot milk over the flour mixture and stir until thick.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Add the grated lemon rind, butter, sugar, almonds, and beaten egg yolks. Mix well.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

  2. Bake until light gold in color.

  3. For icing, beat the 2 egg whites with lemon juice and a little sugar.

  4. Spread the icing over the pudding and return to the oven until stiff.

  5. Allow the pudding to cool completely 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. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the base of the custard that thickens with flour and sets the pudding.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stable custard that holds the pudding together.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the mixture set when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped into the icing, they form a stiff topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the icing brown lightly.

The step that matters

Cooling the custard before adding the egg yolks. If the thickened milk is still hot, the beaten egg yolks can scramble and become grainy. Letting it cool first keeps the custard smooth and lets the yolks blend in evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, walnut, butter, sugar, almond, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, walnut, butter, sugar, almond, egg. 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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