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Dessert

Capirotada, a Spanish Pudding

Capirotada is a Spanish bread pudding made with green onions, lard, water, sugar, raisins, salt, coriander, stale bread, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Capirotada, a Spanish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the syrup

  1. Fry the chopped green onions in hot lard.

  2. Add hot water, sugar, raisins, salt, and coriander; mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Wet slices of stale bread in the mixture.

  2. Layer the wet bread in a baking pan, adding juice and cheese pieces between layers.

  3. Pour the remaining mixture over the layers.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  2. Onion + coriandertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the liquid, giving a soft, spoonable texture.
Hot lard
Fat that carries the onion flavor and adds richness and savory depth.
Cheese pieces
Melt between the bread layers, adding richness and a stretchy, savory texture.
Raisins
Plump in the hot liquid and add concentrated sweetness and chew.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory onion, salt, and cheese.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, sugar, coriander, bread, cheese):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sugar, coriander, bread, cheese. 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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