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Dessert

Marrow Pudding

A baked pudding made with ladies' finger cakes, beef marrow, currants, candied lemon peel, nutmeg, sugar, salt, wine or brandy, and custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Marrow 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).

Make the filling

  1. In a dish, combine the finger cakes, beef marrow, currants, candied lemon peel, nutmeg, powdered sugar, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Pour the wine or brandy over the mixture.

Bake

  1. Fill the dish with custard, ensuring to create a border of pastry around the rim.

  2. Bake for about 30 minutes.

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

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

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Beef + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ladies' finger cakes
Soak up the wine or brandy and custard, giving the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Beef marrow
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it bakes.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bites that contrast with the soft crumb.
Wine or brandy
Adds aroma and acidity or warmth, and moistens the cakes before baking.
Custard
Sets during baking to bind the mixture into a tender, cohesive pudding.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, wine):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, lemon, nutmeg, sugar, wine. 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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