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Dessert

Coffee Pudding

A baked pudding made with coffee, milk, bread crumbs, sugar, raisins, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Coffee Pudding

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Coffee 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.

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk for 1 hour.

  2. Beat the egg yolks into the soaked bread mixture.

Mix and bake

  1. Add the brown sugar, beaten egg whites, strong coffee, and seeded raisins.

  2. Flavor with nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Eggs
Set the mixture as they cook, binding it into a custard-like pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the bread crumbs.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that deepens the flavor.
Strong coffee
Provides the main flavor and a slightly bitter, roasted aroma.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Egg proteins set as they heat, so the pudding firms up gradually. Overbaking makes the eggs tighten and curdle, leaving a grainy texture and weeping liquid.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, milk, bread, sugar, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, milk, bread, sugar, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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