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Dessert

Albert Pudding

A fruit pudding made with butter, eggs, flour, sugar, lemon rind, raisins, and decorated with citrons and figs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Albert Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the beaten eggs, flour, sugar, and grated lemon rind.

  3. Stir in the stoned raisins.

Fill and cook

  1. Butter a bowl or mold thickly and decorate with stars and diamonds of citrons and figs.

  2. Pour the mixture into the bowl, filling it within half an inch from the top.

  3. Cover with a cloth as directed for apple pudding.

  4. Boil or steam for at least 3 hours.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Lemon + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it traps air and gives the pudding a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the pudding sets.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the crumb.
Stoned raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Fill the bowl no higher than half an inch from the top. The pudding batter expands as it cooks and needs room to rise; overfilling can cause it to spill or cook unevenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, flour, sugar, raisin, fig):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, flour, sugar, raisin, fig. 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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