Skip to main content
Dessert

Iced Pudding a LA Percy Bysshe Shelley

A chilled pudding made with egg yolks, cream, sugar, vanilla, maraschino, and dried fruits.

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 mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, cream, sugar, and vanilla sugar until well combined.

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

  3. Add the mixed dried fruits and freeze again.

Serve

  1. Fill a mold with the mixture, then embed it in 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 the cream to give a rich, smooth, custard-like body that stays tender when frozen.
Cream
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel, which limits large ice crystals.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, so the pudding stays soft enough to slice.
Maraschino
Adds aroma and flavor, and its alcohol keeps the frozen mixture softer.
Mixed dried fruits
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit flavor to the frozen base.

The step that matters

Embedding the mold in ice and salt. Salt lowers the melting point of the ice, so the mold chills quickly and stays frozen. Meltwater must not seep into the mold, or the pudding will taste salty and dilute.

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