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Dessert

A Souffle Pudding

A soufflé pudding made with raisins, sponge cake, eggs, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

A Souffle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a quart mould and add the raisins.

  2. Cut the sponge cakes into pieces and place them in the mould.

Make the custard

  1. Whisk the eggs to break the yolks, then pour in the boiling milk and add sugar to taste.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve into the mould.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the mould and boil it.

  2. Serve hot with wine sauce.

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. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Set as they cook, binding the custard and holding the pudding together.
Sponge cakes
Soak up the custard and give the pudding a soft, moist body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a tender custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard.
Raisins
Add sweet, chewy bites throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Cover the mould and boil it. The cover traps steam so the custard cooks in moist heat. The eggs then set gently and evenly, without drying out or turning grainy at the edges.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar. 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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