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Dessert

Cherry Pudding

A pudding made with sugar, eggs, bread crumbs, spices, lemon peel, and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Cherry Pudding

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 ↓

Cherry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the sugar and eggs until very light.

  2. Add the bread crumbs, cinnamon, cloves, lemon peel, and cherries.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

  2. Place the dish in a Caloric oven with one hot radiator underneath and one on top.

  3. Bake for 2 hours.

  4. Serve with boiling wine poured over it or without.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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
Whisked until light, they trap air and set the pudding into a tender structure as they bake.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and egg, giving the pudding body and a soft, moist crumb.
Cherries
Add fruit, moisture and tartness that flavour the pudding as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the eggs whisk to a light, stable foam.

The step that matters

Beating the sugar and eggs until very light. Whisking incorporates air into the eggs, which gives the pudding its lift and light texture. If the mixture is under-beaten, the pudding will be dense and heavy after baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, bread, cinnamon, clove. 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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