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Dessert

Puddings with Cream.

A group of baked and poached custard-style puddings made with almonds, biscuits, candied fruit, or fruit purée.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Auguste Escoffier · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,696 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Puddings with Cream.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond puddings

  1. Make a preparation for souffléd pudding (No. 2505), moistened with almond milk.

  2. Pour it into copiously-buttered moulds, sprinkled inside with splintered and grilled almonds.

  3. Set to poach in the bain-marie.

  4. As an accompaniment serve a sabayon prepared with white wine and flavoured with orgeat.

  5. Mix to the consistence of a pomade four oz. of butter and five oz. of powdered sugar; add eight oz. of finely-chopped almonds, a pinch of table salt, a half table-spoonful of orange-flower water, two eggs, two egg-yolks, and one-sixth pint of cream.

  6. Pour this preparation into a buttered pie-dish, and cook in a bain-marie in the oven.

Make the biscuit pudding

  1. Crush eight oz. of lady's-finger biscuits in a saucepan, and moisten them with one pint of boiling milk containing five oz. of sugar.

  2. Stir the whole over the fire, and add five oz. of candied fruit, cut into dice and mixed with currants (both products having been macerated in kirsch), three egg-yolks, four oz. of melted butter, and the white of five eggs beaten to a stiff froth.

  3. Set to poach in a bain-marie, in a low, even Charlotte mould, or in a pie-dish, and serve an apricot sauce at the same time.

Make the layered fruit pudding

  1. Garnish a buttered cylinder-mould with lady's-finger biscuits or slices of buttered biscuit, saturated with some kind of liqueur; arranging them in alternate layers with a salpicon of candied fruit and currants, macerated in liqueur.

  2. Here and there spread a little apricot jam.

  3. Fill up the mould, little by little, with preparation No. 2639, flavoured according to fancy, then poach in a bain-marie.

  4. Turn out the pudding at the last moment, and coat it with English custard flavoured with vanilla.

Build the custard-layered pudding

  1. Butter a mould; set it in a bain-marie, and pour a few table-spoonfuls of the above preparation into it.

  2. Let it set, and upon this set custard sprinkle a layer of suitable fruit, sliced.

  3. Cover the fruit with a fresh coat of custard, but more copiously than in the first case; let this custard set as before; cover it with fruit, and proceed in the same order until the mould is full.

  4. Continue the cooking in the bain-marie; let the preparation stand a few minutes before turning it out, and serve at the same time a sauce made from the same fruit as that used for the pudding.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

278Calories
15 gProtein
19 gFat
13 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Auguste Escoffier. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cream + orangetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custards and bind the puddings into a sliceable structure as they cook.
Butter (in the method)
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the puddings tender.
Almonds (in the method)
Add nutty flavour and a finely textured body to the mixture.
Lady's-finger biscuits (in the method)
Soak up the hot milk and liqueur, giving the pudding body as it sets.
Milk
Moistens the biscuits and loosens the mixture so it sets softly.
Sugar (in the method)
Sweetens the puddings and balances the richness of the butter and eggs.

The step that matters

Poach in the bain-marie. A water bath keeps the heat gentle and even, so egg-set puddings cook through without curdling, weeping or turning rubbery. Turn them out once they are just set and let them stand briefly first.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, milk, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, egg. 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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