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Pompadour Pudding, Rich

A rich pudding made with soaked bread crumbs, beef suet, macaroons, raisins, cherries, candied peel, lemon rind, nutmeg, and served with a sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pompadour Pudding, Rich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in boiling cream until cool.

  2. Beat the soaked crumbs with a fork.

  3. Mix in the beef suet, flour, crushed macaroons, powdered sugar, raisins, cherries, candied peel, lemon rind, grated nutmeg, and salt.

  4. Stir in the egg yolks and brandy until well combined.

  5. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold, cover with oiled paper, and tie securely in a floured cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil or steam the pudding for 2.5 hours.

  2. Let it stand for a minute before turning it out and serving.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, heat sherry without boiling, then dissolve powdered sugar in it.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and whisk over gentle heat until thickened and frothy.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soaked in cream, they add body and a moist, tender crumb to the pudding.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and enrich it, helping it set; whisked into the sauce they thicken it.
Flour
Helps bind the mixture and gives the pudding its body as it cooks.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and dissolves into the sherry sauce.

The step that matters

Whisking the sauce egg yolks over gentle heat. Egg yolks thicken when warmed gently but scramble if overheated. Keep the heat low and whisk constantly so the sauce thickens smoothly without curdling.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, bread, beef, flour, sugar, raisin, nutmeg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, bread, beef, flour, sugar, raisin, nutmeg. 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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