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Dessert

A Hunting Pudding

A rich pudding made with lemon skins, almonds, sugar, butter, eggs, orange flower water, cream, flour, suet, currants, raisins, candied citrus, nutmeg, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 skins of the lemons until very tender, then beat them finely.

  2. Beat the almonds in orange flower water and mix with the sugar.

Combine and bake

  1. Melt the butter and let it cool, then combine with the egg yolks and whites, and a little orange flower water.

  2. Mix all ingredients together and bake in an 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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the pudding and add richness and structure as they cook.
Almonds
Provide the main flavour and a fine, tender body to the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding loose and overbaking makes it dry and rubbery. Check that the centre is firm but not hard.

Swap the orange

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

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

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