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Dessert

Easter Pudding

A gelatin-based dessert made with lemon juice, sugar, brandy, and cherries, set in a mold and chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Easter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in boiling water.

  2. Add the lemon juice, sugar, brandy, and cherries.

  3. Mix all ingredients together thoroughly.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until set.

  2. Serve chilled.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable pudding as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the sweetness.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour.
Cherries
Add fruity flavour and sweetness to the set pudding.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine in boiling water. Gelatine must dissolve completely in hot water before the other ingredients are added. Undissolved granules leave gritty spots and weaken the set, so the pudding may not hold its shape when chilled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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