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Dessert

Semolina Pudding

A baked semolina custard made with milk, semolina, egg, sugar, butter, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Semolina Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the semolina base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk and semolina.

  2. Heat the saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally until it boils and thickens, then remove from heat.

Add the egg and bake

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg with the sugar until combined.

  2. Grease a ¾ pint pie dish with butter.

  3. Once the semolina mixture has cooled slightly, stir in the sweetened egg.

  4. Pour the mixture into the greased pie dish.

  5. Grate nutmeg over the top of the mixture.

  6. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes, then serve.

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. Semolina + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Semolina + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Semolina
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding its body and a soft, set texture.
Egg
Adds richness and helps set the pudding as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the semolina thickens into a creamy mixture.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a mild molasses flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg only after the semolina has cooled slightly. Adding beaten egg to very hot mixture can scramble it into lumps. Cooling it slightly lets the egg blend smoothly and set evenly in the bake.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, semolina, egg, 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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