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Dessert

Plum-pudding Glace

A chilled plum pudding ice cream made with raisins, almonds, preserved ginger, citron, and sweetened cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum-pudding Glace

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavourings

  1. Seed the raisins and boil them gently in the milk or cream with the cinnamon for 15 minutes.

  2. Shell the almonds. Remove the skins by pouring boiling water on them, then rub the almonds in a wet towel.

  3. Pound the almonds fine in a mortar with a few drops of rosewater.

  4. Slice the preserved ginger and citron thinly.

Make the custard base

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the powdered sugar until creamy.

  2. Strain the raisins and cinnamon from the milk.

  3. Return the milk to the fire.

  4. Stir in the egg and sugar mixture.

  5. Stir until the mixture begins to thicken.

  6. Remove from heat.

Freeze and serve

  1. Once cooled, add the fruit and almonds to the mixture along with the sweetened cream.

  2. Freeze the mixture.

  3. Pack the frozen mixture in ice.

  4. Serve with whipped cream flavored with wine, brandy, or rum.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 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
Thicken the custard base and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Milk or cream
Carries the cinnamon and raisin flavour and forms the creamy body of the ice cream.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness after being softened in the hot milk.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a fine, rich texture when pounded into the base.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves easily into the egg yolks.
Preserved ginger
Adds spicy, aromatic flavour and a bit of chewy bite to the fruit mix.

The step that matters

Stir the custard until it just begins to thicken. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if they get too hot they can curdle or scramble. Stop once the mixture coats a spoon and begins to thicken, then remove it from the heat.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, milk, cinnamon, almond, egg, sugar, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, milk, cinnamon, almond, egg, sugar, cream. 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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