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A Marrow Pudding

A savory pudding made from beef marrow, stale bread, milk, eggs, currants, candied peel, nutmeg, lemon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

A Marrow Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Chop half the marrow from the beef bone and set aside the largest piece.

  2. Chop the remaining marrow into small pieces.

  3. In a basin, mix the chopped marrow with the stale cake.

  4. Boil the milk and pour it over the cake mixture; let it soak.

  5. In another basin, whisk the eggs until frothy.

Make the pudding

  1. Once the cake has soaked, beat it until smooth.

  2. Add the whisked eggs to the cake mixture and mix well.

  3. Stir in currants, candied orange and lemon peel, grated nutmeg, grated lemon peel, and sugar to taste.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and place the reserved marrow pieces on top.

  5. Garnish with additional currants and thin slices of citron or lemon peel.

Bake

  1. Bake in a warm oven (350°F / 175°C) until set.

  2. Optionally, decorate the edges with puff pastry before baking.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the pudding into a firm, sliceable custard as they cook.
Milk
Soaks the cake and provides moisture for a soft, tender texture.
Stale cake
Absorbs the hot milk and forms the soft, bready body of the pudding.
Beef marrow
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a savoury, buttery depth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the rich marrow and spiced flavours.

The step that matters

Bake until set. The eggs set as they cook, so the pudding firms into a custard. Overbaking makes the eggs tighten and weep, leaving the texture rubbery and dry.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, milk, egg, orange, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, milk, egg, orange, lemon, nutmeg. 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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