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Dessert

Nut Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, almonds, sugar, flour, and vanilla, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Nut Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  2. Mix the grated almonds, sugar, and a splash of vanilla into the yolks.

  3. Sprinkle flour over the beaten egg whites and gently fold into the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into molds and steam for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Whites trapped with air give the pudding its light, set structure as it steams.
Grated almonds
Provide body and a nutty flavour, giving the pudding a dense, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps to soften the texture of the set pudding.
Flour
Lightly sets the mixture and gives it enough structure to hold its shape.

The step that matters

Folding the flour into the beaten whites. Gentle folding keeps the air in the beaten egg whites. Stirring hard would deflate them, leaving a denser, heavier pudding once steamed.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits less well
  4. Macadamia nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, vanilla, 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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