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Dessert

Montrose Pudding

A creamy ice cream dessert made with cream, sugar, egg yolks, vanilla, and strawberry water ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,385 recipes. Both carry p-vinylguaiacol, which smells spicy, fruity. The science ↓

Montrose Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a double boiler, heat 1 pint of cream until it reaches scalding point.

  2. In a bowl, beat together the egg yolks and sugar until light.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the scalded cream, stirring constantly until it thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool, then add the remaining pint of strawberry water ice and vanilla.

Freeze and mold

  1. Pour the mixture into an ice cream freezer and freeze as you would ice cream.

  2. Once frozen, pack into a melon mold, leaving a well in the center.

  3. Fill the well with strawberry water ice and cover with reserved pudding.

  4. Place the lid on the mold and pack in ice and salt for at least 2 hours.

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.

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. Vanilla + strawberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,385 recipes

    Shared aroma: p-vinylguaiacol (spicy, fruity).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + strawberrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

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

  5. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set on gentle heat and add richness.
Cream
Provides the rich base and fat that gives the frozen pudding a smooth texture.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the texture of the frozen mixture.
Strawberry water ice
Supplies strawberry flavour and a contrasting icy layer in the mold.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the scalded cream. Egg yolks can scramble if they get too hot too fast. Stirring constantly while the mixture heats evenly lets the custard thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Strawberrythe original
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, vanilla. 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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