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Dessert

Danish Pudding

A baked custard made from brown sugar, milk, eggs, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Danish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the caramel

  1. Melt and scorch the sugar in an iron skillet.

  2. Add boiling water and boil for 2 minutes until dissolved.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk and slowly pour it into the well-beaten egg yolks.

  2. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg white.

  3. Combine the milk and egg mixture with the skillet mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) until set.

  2. Serve with rich cream.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Dark brown sugar
Melted and scorched, it gives the pudding its deep, toffee-like sweetness and colour.
Egg yolks
They thicken the milk as they set, giving the pudding a creamy, custard-like body.
Egg white
Beaten stiff and folded in, it adds lightness and a softer, airier texture.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and keeps the pudding moist.
Vanilla
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that rounds out the sweetness.

The step that matters

Scorching the sugar. Sugar darkens quickly and turns bitter once it burns, so it should be taken to a deep brown and stopped before it smokes. Adding boiling water carefully helps dissolve it into a smooth syrup.

“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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