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Pudding, a LA Cekito

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and strawberry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,385 recipes mention both. Both carry p-vinylguaiacol, which smells spicy, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Prepare 18 finger gauffres and 18 almond cornet-gauffres, then arrange the finger gauffres around the inside of a circular charlotte mold.

  2. Make an iced custard flavored with vanilla and prepare an iced Macedoine of fruits in strawberry water-ice.

  3. An hour before serving, coat the sides of the gauffres in the mold with 1 inch of vanilla cream ice and cover the bottom in the same way.

  4. Fill the center with the iced Macedoine of fruits, place a round piece of paper on top, and cover with the lid.

  5. Immerse the pudding in rough ice mixed with coarse sea salt in a pail or tub, cover with a damp cloth, and set in a cool place until needed.

  6. To serve, turn the pudding out onto a dish with the decorated top, garnishing the base and center with small gauffres filled with vanilla cream ice and topped with strawberries.

  7. For the decorated top, ornament a circular piece of gauffre with sugar icing to imitate a scroll, allow it to dry, and complete the decoration with red currant and bright apple jelly.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Vanilla + strawberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,385 recipes

    Shared aroma: p-vinylguaiacol (spicy, fruity).

  2. Strawberry + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together281 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together35,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Vanilla + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,501 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Vanilla and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 35,031 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, vanilla, strawberry, sugar, apple):

  1. Peachbetter flavor fit
  2. Apricotbetter flavor fit
  3. Figbetter flavor fit
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, vanilla, strawberry, sugar, apple. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

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