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Dessert

Macaroon Pudding

A custard pudding made with macaroons, sherry, water, eggs, sugar, cornstarch, and topped with whipped egg whites and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and almond work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 517 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Macaroon 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.

Prepare the base

  1. Cover a platter evenly with macaroons.

  2. In a saucepan, combine sherry and water, and bring to a boil.

  3. In a bowl, mix egg yolks, sugar, and cornstarch.

  4. Pour the egg mixture into the boiling sherry and water, stirring constantly until thickened.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, sweeten them, and spread over the custard.

  2. Decorate the top with blanched almonds and brown lightly in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding cold.

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. Sherry + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroons
Form the crumbly base layer that soaks up the custard and gives the pudding its flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot sherry liquid into a stable custard when heated with the yolks.
Egg whites
Whipped and sweetened, they form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Sherry
Adds aroma and flavour to the custard base.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the boiling liquid. Cornstarch and egg yolks can clump or scramble if the mixture is added too fast or left unstirred. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the starch swells and the custard thickens smoothly.

“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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