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Dessert

Bakewell Pudding

A layered dessert made with biscuit crumbs, sugar, cream, pears, cherries, almonds, and eggs, baked in a pie dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Bakewell Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Butter a pie dish.

  2. In a basin, mix biscuit crumbs, sugar, and cream.

Layer and top

  1. Layer the mixture in the pie dish, followed by a layer of thinly sliced pears.

  2. Add another layer of biscuit crumbs, then dried cherries, more crumbs, and almonds.

  3. Beat two eggs and pour over the layers, reserving one egg for the top.

  4. Whip the reserved egg with a little salt and sugar, then spread it on top.

  5. Decorate with dried cherries and almonds.

Bake

  1. Bake for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Pear + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together175 recipes

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

  4. Biscuit + peartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Biscuit crumbs
Form the soft base layers that soak up the custard and set into a moist, crumbly texture.
Eggs
Bind the layers and set during baking to give the pudding its custard-like structure.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, helping the crumbs soften and the custard turn tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly as it bakes.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a crisp, toasted texture on the surface.
Dried cherries
Add concentrated fruity sweetness and chewy texture through the layers.

The step that matters

Spreading the whipped egg topping. Egg proteins set into a firm, even layer when baked; if the topping is unevenly spread or too thin, it can dry out or crack while the layers below stay soft.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, sugar, cream, egg, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, sugar, cream, egg, almond. 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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