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Dessert

Pudding a LA Macedoine

A gelatin-based fruit pudding with orange and lemon juice, sugar, and assorted fruits, topped with sweetened beaten cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pudding a LA Macedoine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Dissolve the soaked gelatine in boiling water.

  3. Add sugar, orange juice, and lemon juice to the mixture.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Layer the fruits in the jelly mixture.

  2. Garnish with sweetened and flavored beaten 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Fig + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Fig + datestop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Orange + figtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly once dissolved and chilled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharp citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sweet jelly.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and liquid to the jelly base.
Figs
Add texture and natural sweetness as suspended pieces in the jelly.

The step that matters

Dissolve the soaked gelatine in boiling water. Gelatine must be fully dissolved before the other liquids are added, otherwise it can set unevenly and leave grainy or stringy lumps in the jelly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, orange, fig, dates, banana, walnut, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, fig, dates, banana, walnut, 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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