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Dessert

Sweetmeat Pudding

A baked dessert of layered pastry, sweetmeats, and a lemon‑flavoured egg custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 egg yolks and whites together in a bowl.

  3. In another bowl, cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy.

  4. Mix the beaten eggs with the sugar and butter mixture.

  5. Add the lemon juice and rind to the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with rich pastry.

  2. Spread a layer of sweetmeats or preserves on the pastry.

  3. Pour a layer of the egg mixture over the preserves.

  4. Add another layer of sweetmeats on top.

  5. Finish with a final layer of the egg mixture.

  6. Bake in the preheated oven 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
Add richness and help the custard set firm when baked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, creamed with butter, helps give a light texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the custard its structure.
Sweetmeats or preserves
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and flavour between the custard layers.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg mixtures set as the proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves a runny custard, while overbaking can make it curdle, weep, or turn tough.

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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