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Dessert

Nut Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk, eggs, sugar, almonds, sherry, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and sherry work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 517 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Nut Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs separately.

  2. Boil the milk.

  3. Add the egg yolks, sherry wine, chopped almonds, and baking powder to the milk.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Steam and serve

  1. Brown the sugar and pour it around the pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with brandy.

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. Almond + sherrytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

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

  2. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trap air for a light structure, while yolks add richness and set the pudding.
Milk
Provides moisture and the liquid base that gives the pudding its soft body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when browned, a caramel flavour and colour.
Chopped almonds
Add nutty flavour and a slightly firm, textured crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during heating to help the pudding rise and become lighter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Beaten whites hold air that gives the pudding its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the foam and leaves a denser pudding.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, sherry, wine):

  1. Cocoafits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, sherry, 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.

More almond pudding recipes

Baked 26Boiled 20Lemon 13Chocolate 6Chestnut 5Frozen 3 See all 210 →

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