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Dessert

Sponge Cake Pudding

A pudding made by soaking sponge cake in jelly, then baking in custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Sponge Cake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a pudding mold.

  2. Soak the sponge cakes or stale cake slices in a mixture of jelly dissolved in hot water.

  3. Fill the mold with the soaked cake.

  4. Prepare enough custard to fill the mold and have extra for boiling.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the mold tightly and place it in a kettle of boiling water.

  2. Boil for one hour.

  3. Turn out of the mold and serve with custard poured over it.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sponge cake
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the jelly liquid to hold its shape.
Jelly
Sets as it cools, giving the cake moisture and a firm, sliceable texture.
Milk
Forms the custard that is poured over the pudding, adding richness and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Cover the mold tightly before boiling. A tight cover traps steam so the pudding cooks evenly and stays moist. Water entering the mold would dilute the jelly and custard and leave the texture soggy.

“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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