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Dessert

Sunderland Pudding

A lemon-flavored rice pudding made with milk, eggs, sugar, and baked, then iced with lemon and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sunderland 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 the base

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine milk, boiled rice, egg yolks, sugar, and grated lemon rind.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Make the icing

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar and lemon juice to the egg whites, mixing until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Spread the icing over the baked pudding and brown it lightly under the broiler.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Enrich the custard and help it set into a soft, tender body.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light icing that holds its shape.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets around the rice into a creamy custard.
Boiled rice
Gives the pudding body and a soft, starchy texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue icing and helps it stay smooth and glossy.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites need to be fully whipped and then combined gently with the sugar so the icing stays airy and does not weep or collapse under the broiler.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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