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Dessert

Wine Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with eggs, sugar, spices, lemon rind, bread crumbs, baked and topped with boiled wine, sugar, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Wine Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar until very foamy.

  2. Add cinnamon, cloves, lemon rind, and enough bread crumbs to make a thin batter; stir well. Optionally add baking powder.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the baking dish in a preheated oven with one hot stone underneath and one on top.

  2. Bake for ½ hour.

  3. After baking, turn the pudding onto a platter and pour over it the boiled white wine mixed with sugar and lemon rind.

  4. Serve warm or 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Beaten into a foam, they give the pudding its airy structure and help it set as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the beaten egg foam.
Bread crumbs
Bulk out the egg mixture into a thin batter that bakes to a soft, set body.
White wine
Flavours the poured sauce, with its acidity brightening the sweet pudding.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar until very foamy. Whisked eggs trap air that expands in the oven and gives the pudding its lift and light texture. Under-beaten eggs produce a dense, heavy result.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, bread, white wine, wine):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, bread, white wine, wine. 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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