Skip to main content
Dessert

Macaroni and Almond Pudding

A sweet pudding made with macaroni, almonds, custard, and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Macaroni and Almond Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Simmer the macaroni in 1 pint of milk for 30 minutes until tender but not broken. Remove the macaroni from heat.

  2. Stir in butter and salt.

  3. Let the macaroni cool.

Make the custard

  1. Combine the remaining milk, eggs, and sugar to make a custard.

  2. Heat the custard gently without boiling.

  3. Chop the blanched almonds, adding a few drops of rose-water to prevent oiling.

Assemble and bake

  1. Once the macaroni is cool, mix it with the custard, breaking it as little as possible.

  2. Season the mixture and stir in the chopped almonds.

  3. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered pudding dish.

  4. Top the pudding with meringue made from the reserved egg whites.

  5. Bake until set.

  6. Serve warm, dusted with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + rosetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 pudding, and the whites form the meringue topping.
Milk
Forms the custard liquid and cooks the macaroni until tender.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavor and a chopped, crunchy texture throughout the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue brown when baked.
Macaroni (in the method)
Provides the body of the pudding, held in the set custard.

The step that matters

Heat the custard gently without boiling. Egg proteins set at moderate heat, but if the custard gets too hot it curdles and turns grainy instead of smooth and creamy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes