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Dessert

Marrow Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, beef marrow, spices, candied peel, and biscuits, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Marrow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk with cinnamon and lemon peel, then strain the milk.

  2. Combine the strained milk with beef marrow, currants, candied citron, orange peel, nutmeg, brandy, syrup, and crushed Naples biscuits.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten eggs.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a dish lined with puff pastry.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable custard when baked.
Beef marrow
Adds richness and a rounded, fatty flavour and moisture to the pudding.
Naples biscuits
Soak up the liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
New milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a custard.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the beaten eggs. Eggs added to very hot liquid can scramble or cook unevenly instead of blending smoothly. Cooling first lets the eggs thicken the custard evenly as it bakes.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, lemon, beef, orange, nutmeg, brandy):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, lemon, beef, orange, nutmeg, brandy. 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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