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Dessert

Sponge Cake Pudding

A baked pudding made with stale sponge cake, eggs, milk, sugar, lemon peel, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sponge Cake 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).

  2. Butter a dish and lay the stale sponge biscuits or cake at the bottom.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs well and gradually stir in the boiling milk, sugar, and grated lemon peel.

  2. Add the brandy and pour the mixture over the cake.

  3. Let the pudding stand for 1 hour.

Top and bake

  1. Pour a little clarified butter over the top and cover with sifted sugar.

  2. Bake for 45 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they heat, giving the pudding its structure.
Stale sponge cake
Soaks up the custard and forms the soft, spongy body of the pudding.
Boiling milk
Supplies the liquid for the custard and keeps the pudding moist.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm flavour note to the custard.

The step that matters

Bake for 45 minutes. The egg proteins in the custard set as they heat. Baking too long makes the custard curdle, turn grainy and weep liquid, so the pudding should be removed once it is just set.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, egg, milk, sugar, brandy, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, egg, milk, sugar, brandy, butter. 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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