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Dessert

Princess Pudding

A sweet almond-flavored custard baked in a pudding mold, served with fruit or wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cardamom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 457 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Princess Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan with the rich milk.

  2. Stir the flour into the half cup of milk and add to the boiling milk, stirring constantly until smooth.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Stir in the sugar, pounded almonds, cardamom seeds, and beaten eggs gradually.

  5. Add the almond extract and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered pudding mold sprinkled with bread crumbs.

  2. Place the mold in a pan of boiling water and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 35 minutes.

  3. Turn out and serve immediately with a fruit or 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. Almond + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together457 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Flour + cardamomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and set into a light, custard-like structure when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavour through the batter.
Flour
Thickens the boiled milk mixture so the batter holds its shape.
Pounded blanched almonds
Add body and nutty flavour to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the surface.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the milk until smooth before boiling. Flour lumps form if it is added to hot milk without constant stirring, and lumps do not smooth out later. Stirring while the mixture comes to a boil starches the flour evenly, giving a smooth base that holds the eggs well.

Swap the cardamom

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomthe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

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