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Dessert

Ratifia Pudding

A custard pudding flavored with bitter almonds, bay leaves, cinnamon, sugar, eggs, brandy, and ratifia.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Ratifia Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Flavor a pint and a half of new milk with bitter almonds, blanched and bruised, or with three or four bay leaves and a little cinnamon; add a few grains of salt and four to six ounces of sugar in lumps, according to taste.

  2. Simmer gently for some minutes.

  3. Strain the milk through a fine sieve or muslin and put it into a clean saucepan.

  4. When it again boils, stir it gradually and quickly to six well-beaten eggs which have been likewise strained.

  5. Let the mixture cool, then add a glass of brandy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Lay a half-paste round a well-buttered dish, sprinkle an ounce of ratifias finely crumbled, grate the rind of a lemon over, and place three ounces of whole ratifias upon them.

  2. Pour in sufficient custard to soak them.

  3. After an hour, add the remainder of the custard.

  4. Send the pudding to a gentle oven; bake for half an hour.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

303Calories
15 gProtein
14 gFat
32 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Almond1 almond (1.2g)7
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Bay Leaf1 leaf (0.6g)2
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

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

By Eliza Acton. 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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 custard and give the pudding its body as they cook.
Ratifias
Soak up the custard and add a crisp, almond-like flavour as the pudding bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that bakes into the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the hot milk into the eggs. Pouring the hot milk in slowly and stirring constantly tempers the eggs, so they thicken smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, almond, cinnamon. 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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