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Dessert

Royal Diplomatic Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with lemon and orange juice, sugar, egg whites, and flavored with rose fruit coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Royal Diplomatic Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jellies

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Boil sugar and water together for a few minutes.

  3. Divide the syrup and gelatine in half.

  4. Dissolve one half on the stove.

  5. Add lemon juice.

  6. Strain the lemon jelly into a mold.

  7. Strain the other half into a bowl.

Set and whip

  1. Set in a cool place.

  2. Add beaten egg whites, cream of tartar, powdered sugar, and fruit coloring gradually.

  3. Beat often with an egg beater.

Serve

  1. Place a tablespoon of each color on a pretty dish.

  2. Add a tablespoon of whipped cream.

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

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

  3. Orange + rosetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together876 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the syrup into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam that gives the pudding a light, airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and gives the syrup body.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the whipped egg whites so the foam holds its volume.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour to the jelly.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a soft, creamy topping.

The step that matters

Add the egg whites gradually and beat often. Egg whites foam best when beaten into a mixture that is cool and only partly set. Adding them gradually and beating often spreads the foam evenly, so the gelatine sets around air bubbles instead of leaving streaks or a dense layer.

Swap the orange

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

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

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