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Dessert

Princess Pudding

A rich almond and cardamom pudding baked in a water bath.

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 base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan with the rich milk over medium heat.

  2. Stir the flour into the ½ cup of milk.

  3. Add to the boiling milk, stirring constantly until smooth and it no longer sticks to the pan.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

Assemble and cook

  1. Stir in the sugar, ground almonds, cardamom seeds, beaten eggs (a little at a time), and almond extract.

  2. Beat the mixture well and pour it into a buttered pudding mold sprinkled with fine bread crumbs.

  3. Place the mold in a pan of boiling water and cover it.

  4. If the mold has a center pipe, bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 35 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn out the pudding 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 mixture and set into a firm, sliceable pudding structure when cooked.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth base that gives the pudding body.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture to the pudding.
Ground almonds
Contribute body, nutty flavor and a tender crumb to the pudding.

The step that matters

Cooling the base before adding eggs. Eggs added to a very hot base can scramble and turn lumpy; letting the thickened mixture cool first lets the eggs blend smoothly and set evenly in the pudding.

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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