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Dessert

Cold Pudding

A chilled custard pudding with raisins, marmalade, and sponge cake layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cold Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by whisking together the eggs and milk in a saucepan over medium heat until thickened.

  2. Sweeten the custard with sugar and flavor it with grated lemon peel.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Butter a mold and line it with halved, stoned raisins.

  2. Spread the sponge cake slices with marmalade and arrange them in the mold.

  3. Pour the custard over the cake and raisins, then cover the mold with buttered paper.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for 1 hour.

  2. Once cooled, turn the pudding out onto a plate and serve.

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. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

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

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

Eggs
Set the custard, giving the pudding its body as they thicken with heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture and softness.
Sponge cake
Soaks up the custard and forms the soft, layered body of the pudding.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and sweetness in the lining of the mold.
Marmalade
Adds sweetness and a tangy, fruity flavor to the sponge layer.

The step that matters

Thicken the custard gently. Eggs set when heated, so over-high heat or long cooking can curdle the custard and leave it grainy. Whisking over moderate heat keeps it smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, raisin, 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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