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Dessert

Bombay Pudding No. 1

A sweet pudding made from sugar, flour, egg yolk, ghee, and a thick syrup flavored with allspice and lime.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Bombay Pudding No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Roast the sugar slightly.

  2. Put it into boiling water to make it very thick and cook for a while.

  3. Butter a soup plate or dish and pour the cooked sugar into it, flattening it out.

  4. Cut into squares and let cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Rub each piece with the egg yolk, dredge with flour, and fry in ghee until rich brown.

  2. Arrange in a dish and pour over a thick syrup made from sugar.

  3. Add a few allspice and a little lime juice to the syrup for flavor.

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Egg + gheetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together418 recipes
  5. Flour + gheetop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together539 recipes

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Soogee
Forms the thick, set body of the pudding once cooked and cooled.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binding wash so the flour coating adheres to each piece.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that browns and crisps when fried.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, once roasted and cooked, the base and syrup.
Ghee
Fat for frying that browns the flour coating and adds richness.

The step that matters

Fry until rich brown. The flour-coated pieces brown through Maillard reactions and caramelisation at frying heat; too little heat leaves them pale and greasy, while too much scorches the coating before the surface is evenly coloured.

“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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