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Dessert

Boiled Pudding

A boiled pudding made with butter, egg whites, bread crumbs, lemon, sugar, cloves, rum, citron, almonds, raisins, white wine, milk, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg whites and beat until frothy.

  3. Mix in the bread crumbs, lemon juice and rind, sugar, cloves, and rum.

  4. Fold in the chopped citron, almonds, raisins, white wine, milk, and a few drops of vanilla essence.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold and boil for 1½ 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,605 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the pudding a light, rich body.
Eggs
Egg whites beaten to a froth add lift and help bind the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the liquids and give the pudding its body and structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter as it cooks.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavor while contributing a little moisture.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a pudding mold and boil for 1½ hours. The mold must be sealed and the water kept simmering for the full time. Steam cooks the pudding gently and evenly, so letting the water drop or boil dry can leave it dense or uneven.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, bread, lemon, sugar, rum, almond):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, bread, lemon, sugar, rum, almond. 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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