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Dessert

Amber Pudding

A suet and bread crumb pudding with eggs, sugar, candied lemon and candied orange, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Amber Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Melt the suet and mix it with the bread crumbs.

  2. Beat the eggs well and add them to the mixture.

  3. Stir in sugar, candied lemon, and candied orange.

Bake

  1. Shape the mixture into a pudding and place it in a buttered dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until set.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Bread + orangetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the melted suet and give the pudding its body and structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when baked.
Candied lemon
Adds bright, tangy citrus flavour that cuts through the richness.
Candied orange
Adds sweet citrus aroma and flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Baking only until the eggs have firmed is what gives a sliceable pudding. Underbaking leaves it wet and loose, while overbaking dries the crumbs and makes the eggs rubbery.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits about as well

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