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Dessert

Muffins, Pudding of

A pudding made by soaking muffins and crumpets in boiling milk, lemon zest, sugar, brandy, almonds, and dried fruit, then boiling or baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Muffins, Pudding of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs for 10 minutes.

  2. Place the muffins and crumpets in a bowl.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the muffins and crumpets, adding lemon zest and sugar to taste.

Mix and cook

  1. Mix when cold, then add the brandy, chopped almonds, and beaten eggs.

  2. Stir in the muscatels or dried cherries.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a buttered basin for boiling or a dish lined with puff pastry for baking.

  4. Cook for 1 hour by boiling or baking.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the bread into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Muffins and crumpets
Soak up the hot milk and form the soft, bready body of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread and forms the custard base once combined with the eggs.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm flavour that carries the dried fruit.
Muscatels or dried cherries
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Mix when cold, then add the eggs. If the milk-soaked bread is still hot when the beaten eggs go in, the eggs can scramble rather than thicken smoothly, so letting the mixture cool first helps it set evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, sugar, brandy, almond, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, brandy, almond, butter. 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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