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Dessert

Pompadour Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, candied peel, raisins, macaroons, eggs, cream, and brandy, served with custard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pompadour Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring the cream to a boil and pour it over the bread crumbs.

  2. Let it cool, then beat in the remaining ingredients in the order given.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and steam it.

  4. Serve with a rich custard sauce flavored with orange juice.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Set the pudding as they cook and add richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and gives it a rich, tender crumb.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot cream to form the body of the pudding.
Flour
Adds structure that helps the pudding hold its shape when steamed.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the bread crumbs and enriching the texture.
Macaroons
Contribute sweetness and almond flavor along with some soft texture.

The step that matters

Steaming the mixture. Egg yolks set gently at moderate heat. A hard, rapid boil can make the pudding spongy, cracked or watery, so keep the water at a steady, gentle simmer.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cream, sugar, nutmeg, flour, egg, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, sugar, nutmeg, flour, egg, raisin. 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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