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Prairie Plum Pudding

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Prairie Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew together the raisins and citron.

  2. Grease a dish with butter.

  3. Layer sponge cake (or alternative) and fruit, repeating layers, ending with cake or bread.

  4. Pour custard made from milk, egg yolks, and sugar over the layers.

  5. Bake until a knife inserted shows the milk has thickened.

  6. Make frosting by beating egg whites with powdered sugar, spread on pudding, and brown in the oven.

  7. For the sauce, boil white sugar and water, then add butter and corn starch mixed with cold milk.

  8. Allow to boil for a few moments, then stir in beaten egg white and vanilla essence.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, milk, egg, sugar, corn, vanilla):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, milk, egg, sugar, corn, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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