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Dessert

Queen Pudding

A baked pudding made with tapioca, apples, raisins, and sugar, served with sweetened cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Queen Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca in water overnight.

  2. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  3. Butter a pudding dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the apples, tapioca, and raisins in the dish, adding sugar to taste.

  2. Finish with a layer of tapioca on top.

  3. Bake for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweetened cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Swells in water and thickens as it bakes, giving the pudding its gel-like body.
Apples
Provide fruit flavour and moisture that softens as the pudding bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of concentrated sweetness throughout the layers.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Soaking the tapioca overnight. Dry tapioca pearls need time to hydrate fully. If they go into the oven unsoaked, they stay firm and the pudding will not set evenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, sugar, butter, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, butter, cream. 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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