Skip to main content
Dessert

Iced Pudding a LA Percy Bysshe Shelley

A chilled custard pudding with mixed dried fruits and maraschino.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, cream, sugar, and vanilla sugar to create a custard.

  2. Stir in the maraschino and freeze the mixture until it is quite stiff.

  3. Add the mixed dried fruits and freeze again.

Set in a mold

  1. Fill a mold with the mixture and embed it in rough ice and salt to set.

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 the cream and set the custard base, giving it richness and a smooth texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, keeping the frozen mixture soft and smooth rather than icy.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point, so it stays scoopable when frozen.
Maraschino
Adds liqueur flavor and, as alcohol, further softens the frozen texture.
Mixed dried fruits
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness, contrasting with the smooth custard.

The step that matters

Freezing until quite stiff before adding the fruit. The base must be stiff enough to suspend the dried fruit evenly instead of letting it sink. Under-freezing lets the fruit settle, while over-freezing makes the dessert hard and difficult to unmold.

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.

You might also like

Pineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesPineapple PuddingPineapple Pudding72 recipesPineapple CreamPineapple Cream58 recipes