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Dessert

Sweetmeat Pudding

A baked dessert made with eggs, butter, sugar, lemon, sweetmeats, preserves, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Sweetmeat Pudding

Why it works: Lemon and peach work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 947 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sweetmeat 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 the custard

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the yolks of 10 eggs and the whites of 2 eggs in a bowl.

  3. In another bowl, cream together ½ pound of butter and 1 pound of sugar.

  4. Pour the butter and sugar mixture over the beaten eggs.

  5. Add the juice and rind of 1 lemon and mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with rich pastry.

  2. Layer sweetmeats and preserves on the pastry.

  3. Pour half of the egg mixture over the sweetmeats.

  4. Add another layer of sweetmeats, then pour the remaining egg mixture on top.

  5. Bake until set and golden.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + peachtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the custard set into a delicate structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Lemon juice and rind
Adds acidity and bright aroma that cut through the rich custard.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Eggs set through gentle heat; underbaking leaves the custard runny, while overbaking makes it curdled and tough. Watch for a just-firm centre rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, 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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