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Dessert

Bombay Pudding

A baked coconut custard pudding with butter, nutmeg, wine, and puff pastry lining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 411 recipes. Both carry beta-pinene, which smells pine, resin. The science ↓

Bombay 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a baking dish with puff pastry.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the sweet custard, butter, nutmeg, and wine.

  2. Stir in the grated coconut.

  3. Pour the mixture into the lined dish.

Bake

  1. Bake until light brown.

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. Nutmeg + coconuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together411 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  2. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet custard
Provides the sweet, creamy body that sets as the pudding bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crust and top brown.
Grated coconut
Adds chewy texture and a toasty, sweet flavor.
Wine
Adds aromatic depth and a light acidity that balances the sweetness.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp base that holds the custard filling.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown. Custard-based fillings set gently with moderate heat. Overbaking can make the custard grainy, weepy or curdled, so judge doneness by the color and set rather than by time alone.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, wine, coconut):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Corianderfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, wine, coconut. 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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