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Dessert

Guernsey Pudding

A baked rice pudding flavored with cinnamon, lemon, cloves, and apple marmalade, finished with whisked egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Guernsey 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.

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the rice in the milk with the cinnamon, lemon rind, and cloves until it can be beaten to a pulp.

  2. Sweeten the mixture.

  3. Remove the spices and lemon rind.

  4. Boil the apples with sherry until soft to prepare the marmalade.

  5. Mix the apple marmalade with the rice mixture.

  6. Sweeten to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the whisked egg whites.

  2. Beat the mixture together for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  5. Prepare a custard with the egg yolks.

  6. Serve the custard cold with the pudding.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Breaks down when boiled in milk, giving the pudding a thick, creamy body.
Whole milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice softens into, adding richness and moisture.
Egg whites
Whisked and folded in, they trap air and help the pudding set and rise as it bakes.
Apple marmalade
Adds fruit flavour, sweetness and moisture to the rice mixture.

The step that matters

Folding in the whisked egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while whisked. Folding gently, rather than stirring hard, keeps that air in the mixture so the pudding bakes light instead of dense.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, cinnamon, clove, apple, sherry, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, cinnamon, clove, apple, sherry, 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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