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Prairie Plum Pudding

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Prairie Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew together the raisins and citron.

  2. Grease a dish with butter and layer in sponge cake or your choice of bread or crackers.

  3. Add a layer of the stewed fruit, repeating layers until the last layer is cake or bread.

  4. Pour over the custard made from milk, egg yolks, and sugar, and bake until a knife inserted comes out clean.

  5. For the frosting, beat the egg whites and mix with powdered sugar, then spread over the pudding.

  6. Brown the frosting in the oven.

  7. For the sauce, boil the white sugar and water, then add butter and cornstarch mixed with a little cold milk.

  8. Allow to boil for a few moments, then stir in the beaten egg white and vanilla essence.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, milk, egg, sugar, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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