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Sweetmeat Pudding

A baked pudding of sweetmeats in a buttery egg custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Sweetmeat Pudding

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Sweetmeat Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine 16 egg yolks, ½ pound of sugar, and ½ cup of melted butter.

Assemble

  1. Lay puff pastry in the bottom of pie plates.

  2. Cover the bottom with sliced sweetmeats.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the sweetmeats.

Bake

  1. Bake until set and lightly browned.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Set into a custard as they heat, giving the filling its structure and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture in the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky base that holds the filling in each pie plate.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly browned. Egg yolks set as they heat, but overbaking makes them curdle and turn grainy or rubbery. Pull the pies once the centre just stops wobbling.

“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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