Why it works: Cream and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓
Gipsy Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Assemble the cake
Cut stale cake into thin slices.
Spread slices with jelly or preserves.
Place slices in a deep glass dish.
Pour hot soft custard over the cake and cool before serving.
Alternatively, cover the cake with whipped cream.
Make the cornmeal cake
Mix 1 cup Indian meal and 1 teaspoon salt in a little cold water.
Stir this mixture into 1 quart boiling water and boil for 30 minutes, stirring often.
To fry, pour the hot mixture into a pan wet with cold water.
Once cool, cut into slices.
Flour each side.
Fry until crisp and brown.
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.
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Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Stale cake
- Forms the base layers, soaking up the jelly or custard as it sits.
- Jelly or preserves
- Adds sweetness and fruity flavour, and moistens the cake slices.
- Hot soft custard
- Adds moisture and richness, softening the cake as it cools.
- Whipped cream
- Adds a light, rich topping in place of the custard.
- Indian meal
- Cooks into a thick mush that sets firm when cooled, then browns when fried.
The step that matters
Frying the cooled cornmeal slices. The mush must be fully cool and firm before slicing, or it will break apart. Flouring the surfaces helps form a crisp, browned crust when fried.
“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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