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Dessert

Maraschino Pudding

A layered dessert made with eggs, sugar, whipped cream, and flavored with Sherry or Maraschino, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and pineapple work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 228 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Maraschino Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs with ½ cup sugar until light.

  2. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and 2 cups whipped cream.

  3. Flavor the mixture with Sherry wine, Maraschino, or rum.

Layer and chill

  1. Line a mold with lady fingers, then add a layer of the mixture.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped Maraschino cherries and cover with lady fingers.

  3. Repeat the layers until the mold is filled.

  4. Cover the mold, pack it in salt and ice, and let it stand for 3 hours.

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. Sherry + pineappletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites give the mixture richness and a light, airy body when folded.
Heavy cream
Whipped cream adds moisture and a light, creamy texture that sets as it chills.
Sugar
Sweetens the yolks and balances the flavor of the liqueur.
Lady fingers
Sponge layers that soak up moisture and give the pudding structure when sliced.

The step that matters

Folding in the whites and cream. Stiff egg whites and whipped cream hold air in the mixture. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, so the pudding turns dense instead of light.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream, sherry. 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.

More maraschino pudding recipes

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