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Dessert

Almond Pudding, Baked

A baked pudding made with ground almonds, butter, sugar, milk, eggs, lemon rind, and cinnamon, layered with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Pudding, Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dish

  1. Butter a pie dish.

  2. Line the bottom with thin, buttered slices of roll.

  3. Mix the ground almonds, lemon rind, and cinnamon together.

  4. Put half of the almond mixture into the pie dish.

  5. Cover with thin slices of roll.

  6. Add the remaining almond mixture.

  7. Cover again with slices of roll.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk and add the sugar.

  2. Beat the eggs well.

  3. Pour the hot milk onto the eggs, stirring well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add the milk mixture to the pie dish in tablespoonfuls to avoid floating the slices of roll.

  2. Cover the pudding.

  3. Let it stand for 30 minutes.

  4. Bake gently.

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Penny rolls
Form the bread layers that soak up the custard and hold the pudding together.
Ground almonds
Add body and a nutty flavour that sits within the layers.
Eggs
Set the custard as it bakes, giving the pudding its structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks the bread and sets with the eggs.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the dish brown and taste rounded.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds to its browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the milk mixture to the pie dish. Pouring the custard in tablespoonfuls rather than all at once lets the bread soak it up gradually, so the slices do not float to the top. Floating slices stay dry and leave uneven texture in the finished pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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