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Dessert

Sweetmeat Pudding

A baked pudding made with egg yolks, sugar, butter, pastry, sweetmeats, preserves, lemon juice, and eggs.

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

Why it works: Peach and lemon 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

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

  2. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs together.

  3. Mix the beaten eggs with the sugar.

  4. Melt the butter and pour it into the egg-sugar mixture.

  5. Line a dish with pastry.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer sweetmeats and preserves on the pastry.

  2. Pour a layer of the egg mixture over the sweetmeats.

  3. Add another layer of sweetmeats.

  4. Top with another layer of the egg mixture.

  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. Peach + lemontop 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

Eggs
Coagulate as they bake, setting the custard layers and giving them structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the egg mixture a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture in the custard.
Preserves
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and acidity between the custard layers.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat and set the custard. If the pudding bakes too long or too hot, the proteins over-tighten, causing the custard to curdle, weep liquid, and turn rubbery.

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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