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Dessert

Paradise Pudding

A baked pudding made with flour, butter, milk, eggs, preserved fruit or raisins, sugar, lemon rind, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Paradise Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the flour into a smooth paste with the melted butter.

  3. Pour in the hot milk while stirring continuously until well mixed.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten yolks and whites of 4 eggs.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare a paste border around the dish.

  2. Place preserved fruit or stoned raisins, sugar, lemon rind, and almonds at the bottom of the dish.

  3. Pour the pudding mixture over the fruit and bake.

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard-like pudding and add structure and richness as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter mixture into a smooth batter that holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour and forms the base paste with the flour.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid body of the pudding and gives it a soft, tender texture.
Preserved fruit or stoned raisins
Supplies sweetness and fruity flavour in the bottom of the pudding.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs added to a very hot mixture can scramble or cook unevenly instead of blending smoothly. Cooling first lets the eggs combine into a uniform batter that sets evenly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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