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Dessert

Custard Pudding

A steamed custard made with cream, milk, eggs, brandy, nutmeg, sugar, and bitter almonds, served with butter, sugar, and citrus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Custard Pudding

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Custard Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Mix 5 tablespoons of cream with 2 large tablespoons of flour.

  2. Boil the remaining milk, flavoring it with broken bitter almonds.

  3. Strain the boiled milk and stir it into the cold milk and flour mixture.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then beat the egg yolks and whites together.

  5. Add the eggs to the milk mixture, then stir in the brandy or wine, nutmeg, and sugar.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a large bowl or mold and pour in the mixture.

  2. Tie a cloth tightly over the bowl and place it in a pot of boiling water.

  3. Boil for 2 hours, replenishing the pot with hot water as needed.

  4. Let the pudding cool before turning it out.

  5. Serve with a mixture of butter and sugar stirred together with lemon or orange juice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks and whites set the pudding into a firm, sliceable custard as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the pudding holds its shape rather than turning watery.
Cream or rich milk
Provides richness and moisture, giving the pudding a soft, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the eggs and dairy.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 hours, replenishing the pot with hot water as needed. Gentle, steady heat sets the egg custard evenly. If the water boils dry or drops too low, the pudding cooks unevenly and can become rubbery or split.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, almond, egg, brandy, sugar, butter. 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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