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Dessert

Adelaide Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with eggs, flour, butter, sugar, baking powder, and orange marmalade, boiled in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Adelaide Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs.

  2. Beat the yolks and whites separately until fluffy.

  3. Mix the flour, butter, sugar, baking powder, and orange marmalade together.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold or basin.

  2. Place the mold in boiling water and boil for 1 hour.

  3. Serve immediately with wine sauce.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten whites trap air, giving the pudding a light, airy structure as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets the pudding as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich crumb and a smooth mouthfeel.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the pudding brown lightly.
Borwick's baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and stay light.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness, acidity and orange aroma to the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten whites hold air that gives the pudding its lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, so the pudding comes out dense instead of light.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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