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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A gelatin-based pudding made with lemon juice, sugar, oranges, bananas, figs, walnuts, and optional fresh fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Dissolve the soaked gelatine in boiling water and let it cool.

  3. Add the lemon juice and strain through a fine sieve.

Combine and set

  1. Mix in the sugar, oranges, bananas, figs, walnuts, and any additional fresh fruit.

  2. Pour the mixture into wet molds and set in a cool place.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Banana + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Orange + figtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

  5. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable pudding that holds the fruit in place.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the fruit flavours.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the lemon and the fruit.
Figs
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the set pudding.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour against the soft set base.

The step that matters

Let the gelatine cool before adding the fruit. Gelatine that is still very hot can weaken its setting power and make the pudding fail to firm up. Cooling it slightly before mixing in the lemon juice and fruit helps it set evenly and keeps the fruit suspended rather than sinking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, sugar, orange, banana, fig, walnut):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, orange, banana, fig, walnut. 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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