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Dessert

To Make a Transparent Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with calf's-foot jelly and layered with almonds, raisins, citron, candied lemon, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

To Make a Transparent Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jelly

  1. Make the calf's-foot jelly very stiff.

  2. Pour 1½ cups of jelly into a china basin and let it set.

Layer the pudding

  1. Blanch and slice the almonds, raisins, citron, and candied lemon.

  2. Stick the almonds, raisins, citron, and candied lemon into the jelly, adding a few currants.

  3. Pour more jelly on top until it is an inch higher.

  4. Repeat layering with more almonds, raisins, citron, and lemon until the basin is full.

Set and serve

  1. Let it stand overnight and then turn it out.

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's-foot jelly
Forms the clear, firm gel that holds the fruit and nuts in place.
Almonds
Add crunch and a light nutty flavour against the soft jelly.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and visual contrast within the clear jelly.
Currants
Add small bursts of tart sweetness scattered through the layers.

The step that matters

Make the calf's-foot jelly very stiff. Jelly that is too soft will not hold the almonds, fruit and peel in place when layered and turned out. Gelatine sets firmer when the liquid is concentrated, so the jelly must be stiff before each layer is poured.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, raisin, lemon. 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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