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Dessert

Angel Pudding

A baked pudding made with walnuts, dates, powdered sugar, baking powder, and egg whites, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and dates work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 302 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Angel 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. Chop the walnuts and dates.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped walnuts, dates, powdered sugar, and baking powder.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with whipped cream.

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. Walnut + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

English walnuts
Provide chopped texture and a nutty flavor that gives the pudding body.
Dates
Add sweetness and moisture, helping the pudding stay soft and chewy.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the mixture for an even texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the pudding rises and becomes lighter.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they add air and structure so the pudding sets light.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Beat the whites until stiff peaks form, then fold gently. Overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates the foam, so the pudding bakes denser and rises less.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

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