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Dessert

Iced Pudding a LA Feroy Bysshe Shelley

A chilled dessert made from egg yolks, cream, sugar, vanilla, maraschino, and mixed dried fruits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 Feroy Bysshe Shelley

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

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

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

Finish and freeze

  1. Once frozen, fold in the mixed dried fruits.

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

Serve

  1. To serve, embed the mold in rough ice and salt.

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

Eggs yolks
Add richness and help the mixture set smooth and creamy when frozen.
Cream
Adds fat, which keeps the frozen pudding soft and smooth rather than icy.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and lowers the freezing point, keeping it scoopable.
Mixed dried fruits
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the frozen pudding.

The step that matters

Freeze until quite stiff before folding in the fruit. If the base is not frozen enough, the dried fruit sinks and distributes unevenly. Partial freezing gives a base firm enough to hold the fruit in suspension.

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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