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Dessert

A Hunting Pudding

A pudding made from lemons, almonds, sugar, butter, eggs, and orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 Hunting Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the lemons until very tender, then beat them finely.

  2. Beat the almonds with orange flower water and sugar until very fine.

  3. Melt the butter and let it cool completely.

  4. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs together until well mixed.

Bake

  1. Combine the lemon mixture, almond mixture, butter, and egg mixture, adding a little orange flower water.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Ground almonds give the pudding its body and a rich, nutty texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender, moist crumb and rich mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help it set into a custard-like structure when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift, helping the pudding set light rather than dense.
Lemons
Provide acidity and bright citrus aroma that cut through the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps tenderize its texture.

The step that matters

Let the butter cool completely. Hot melted butter can scramble the eggs or thin the batter unevenly, so the pudding may not set smoothly when baked.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Raisinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, almond, sugar, butter, egg. 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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