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Iced Pudding a LA Percy Bysshe Shelley

A frozen custard pudding with dried fruits, maraschino, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 334 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Iced Pudding a LA Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine the egg yolks, cream, sugar, and vanilla sugar in a bowl to make a custard cream.

  2. Mix in the maraschino and freeze the mixture until stiff.

Add the fruit and freeze

  1. Chop the dried fruits into small squares and fold them into the frozen custard.

  2. Fill a mold with the mixture and freeze again.

Serve

  1. Embed the mold in a mixture of rough ice and salt to serve.

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. Vanilla + peartop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Vanilla + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + peartop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Egg yolks
Emulsify with cream and sugar to form a rich custard that sets firm when frozen.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen pudding a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and lowers its freezing point, keeping the pudding soft enough to scoop.
Mixed dried fruits
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness that contrast with the smooth custard.
Maraschino
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavour to the custard base.

The step that matters

Freezing until stiff before folding in the fruit. Sugar and alcohol lower the freezing point, so the custard must be frozen to a thick, stiff texture before the fruit goes in. If it is still liquid, the dried fruit sinks and the pudding stays soft and uneven.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, sugar, vanilla, pineapple):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Bananafits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, vanilla, pineapple. 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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