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Dessert

Jelly Pudding

A layered pudding made with jelly cake, butter, mace, eggs, milk, sugar, and jelly, baked until set and crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Jelly Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the base

  1. Layer slices of jelly cake in a dish.

  2. Add a small piece of butter between the layers.

  3. Sprinkle each layer with mace until the dish is filled.

  4. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs with 1 cup of milk and 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  5. Pour the yolk mixture over the cake layers.

  6. Bake until set.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites with 4 tablespoons of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread jelly over the top of the pudding.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites and sugar.

  4. Return to the oven until the top is crisp.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mace + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Egg + milktop 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
Yolks set the custard and egg whites form a crisp, airy topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid that, with the eggs, forms the custard around the cake.
Jelly cake
Forms the soft, absorbent base layers that hold the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the egg whites hold stiff peaks and brown.
Jelly
Adds a sweet, fruity layer over the top of the pudding.

The step that matters

Return to the oven until the top is crisp. Meringue-style egg whites can over-brown or weep if overbaked, while underbaking leaves them soft and wet. Watching the top closely keeps it crisp and golden without drying the custard beneath.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

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