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Dessert

Italian Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with crushed biscuits, macaroons, candied peel, sultanas, nuts, eggs, cream, rum, and a rum sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and pistachio share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Italian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Crush the sweet biscuits and macaroons in a bowl.

  2. Mince the candied peel and chop the sultanas and nuts.

  3. In a large bowl, combine the crushed biscuits, macaroons, minced peel, sultanas, and nuts.

  4. Add the egg yolks, egg whites, cream, and rum. Mix thoroughly.

Cook the pudding

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and cook in a bain-marie for about 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix sugar, rum, grated lemon peel, and vanilla in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture until hot.

  3. Ignite it and extinguish after 5 seconds by covering with a lid.

  4. Add the orange juice.

  5. Strain the sauce before serving.

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. Biscuit + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Pistachio + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and help it set into a soft, custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Add airy structure that lightens the pudding as it cooks.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the pudding tender.
Sweet biscuits
Form the crumb base that gives the pudding its body.
Macaroons
Add crumb body and a concentrated almond sweetness and aroma.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it become smooth and syrupy.

The step that matters

Cooking the pudding in a bain-marie. Gentle, indirect heat from the water bath keeps the egg-rich mixture from overheating, which would make it curdle or turn rubbery. Cooking time should be watched so it sets evenly without drying out.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, pistachio, egg, cream, rum, sugar, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, pistachio, egg, cream, rum, sugar, sauce. 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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