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Dessert

A Quaking Pudding

A steamed pudding made with cream, eggs, nutmeg, bread crumbs, and rice flour, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Quaking Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs well and mix them with the cream.

  2. Add the grated nutmeg and a pinch of salt.

  3. Mix the crumbs of the light loaf with the rice flour and a little of the cream.

  4. Butter a cloth well and dust the cloth with flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the mixture inside the cloth, without tying the cloth too tightly.

  2. Prepare a pot of boiling water and place the pudding in it.

  3. Let it cook for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve with a sauce of your choice.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, tender custard-like pudding when cooked.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pudding a soft, tender texture.
Light loaf crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft, light structure.
Rice flour
Helps thicken the mixture and gives it a delicate structure as it cooks.

The step that matters

Do not tie the cloth too tightly. The pudding expands and firms as it cooks, so a tight cloth can restrict its swelling and make the texture dense or split the cloth.

“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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