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Dessert

Genoise Pudding

A sponge cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, raisins, and nutmeg, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Genoise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add nutmeg to the mixture.

Fill and cook

  1. Butter a bowl and place some seeded raisins in it.

  2. Pour the mixture into the bowl over the raisins.

  3. Cover the bowl with a cloth and boil for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with hot or cold wine sauce.

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 + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Eggs
Trap air and set the sponge structure as it cooks, giving it a light crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the creamed mixture hold air.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the sponge together after cooking.

The step that matters

Covering the bowl and boiling. The cloth and covered bowl trap steam and heat around the batter, so the sponge cooks through evenly while staying moist. Letting the water boil away or leaving the bowl uncovered can dry the pudding or leave it unevenly cooked.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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