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Dessert

Muffin Pudding with Dried Cherries

A pudding made by soaking muffins in spiced milk, then mixing with brandy, dried cherries, almonds, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Coriander and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Muffin Pudding with Dried Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Make the milk infusion

  1. Combine milk, coriander seeds, lemon peel, and sugar in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Place muffins in a pan.

  4. Strain the milk mixture over the muffins.

Mix and cook

  1. Once cooled, mash the muffins with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add brandy, dried cherries, nutmeg, pounded almonds, and beaten eggs.

  3. Mix the mixture well.

  4. Boil in a basin or bake in a dish with a pastry crust around it.

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. Coriander + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Coriander + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Coriander + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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 as it cooks.
Muffins
Provide the bread base that soaks up the milk and gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that softens the muffins and forms the custard with the eggs.
Dried cherries
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy pockets of flavour throughout the pudding.
Almonds
Add richness, fat and a nutty flavour that thickens the texture slightly.

The step that matters

Straining the infused milk over the muffins. The milk must be hot enough to soften the muffin crumb evenly, but the eggs are added later, so the mixture should be cooled before mashing and mixing to avoid scrambling the eggs and to keep the custard smooth.

Swap the coriander

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lemon, sugar, brandy, nutmeg, almond, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, sugar, brandy, nutmeg, almond, egg. 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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