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Dessert

Sweetmeat Pudding

A fruit pudding made with quinces, citron, peaches, butter, flour, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Sweetmeat Pudding

Why it works: Quince and peach share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 46 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Sweetmeat Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter with the flour and sugar until smooth.

  3. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the quinces, citron, and peaches in a baking dish.

  2. Pour the butter mixture over the fruit.

  3. Bake for about 30 minutes.

  4. Add preserved lemon peel for extra flavor, if desired.

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. Quince + peachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Quince + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peach + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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
Enriches the batter with fat, giving a rich, tender texture as it sets.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the topping brown lightly in the oven.
Quinces
Provide the fruit base, contributing tartness and aroma beneath the custard.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quince, peach, butter, flour, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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