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Dessert

Frozen Pudding

A chilled custard dessert made with almonds, milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, raisins, citron, pineapple, sherry, meringues, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 911 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Frozen Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch and break the almonds.

  2. Combine the raisins, citron, and pineapple in a dish and pour the sherry over them.

  3. Cover and let sit overnight.

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by boiling the milk, eggs, and sugar together.

  2. Add the almonds and vanilla to the custard and let it cool.

  3. Freeze the custard.

Finish and freeze

  1. Once the custard is frozen, mash the meringues and whip the cream.

  2. Stir the whipped cream and meringues into the frozen custard.

  3. Add the fruit mixture and stir gently, then freeze again.

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 + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

  3. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Cooked into the custard, they set and thicken the base and give it richness.
Heavy cream
Whipped and folded in, it adds airy lightness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and lowers its freezing point, keeping the dessert softer when frozen.
Meringues
Mashed into the custard, they add crisp-soft pieces and extra sweetness and air.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, carrying the eggs and sugar.

The step that matters

Freeze the custard before folding in the cream and meringues. The custard must be firm enough to hold the whipped cream and meringue pieces. If it is still liquid, the cream deflates and the mixture separates, leaving an uneven texture.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, milk, egg, sugar, vanilla, pineapple, sherry. 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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