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Dessert

Cold Pudding

A chilled custard dessert made with eggs, milk, sugar, lemon rind, raisins, marmalade, and sponge cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin 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 ↓

Cold Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Sweeten the milk with lump sugar and add grated lemon rind.

  2. Whisk the eggs and stir them into the milk mixture.

Assemble the mold

  1. Line a buttered mold with halved, stoned raisins.

  2. Spread the slices of sponge cake with marmalade and place them in the mold.

  3. Pour the custard into the mold.

  4. Tie the mold down with paper and cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil gently for 1 hour.

  2. Once cooled, turn it out and 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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gives the pudding its soft, creamy texture.
Sponge cake
Provides the absorbent body that soaks up custard and holds the pudding together.
Marmalade
Adds sweetness and a bright, tangy flavour that contrasts with the custard.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness in the pudding's decorative lining.

The step that matters

Tie the mold down with paper and cloth. Gentle boiling cooks the custard by moist heat. A loose cover lets water enter and dilutes the custard, while a snug seal keeps the pudding moist and evenly textured.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits about as well

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