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Dessert

Muffin Pudding

A milk-based pudding made with teacakes, spices, brandy, and dried cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Coriander and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Muffin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the milk

  1. Boil the milk for 8 minutes with caraway or coriander seeds, lemon peel, orange peel, and sugar.

  2. Strain the milk and mix it hot with the light teacakes.

Add the flavourings

  1. Add cinnamon or nutmeg, brandy, and dried preserved cherries.

Bake

  1. Bake until set.

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. Coriander + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Coriander + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks into the teacakes and gives the pudding its body.
Light teacakes
Form the bread base that absorbs the custard-like liquid and gives the pudding structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the citrus and brandy.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, boozy flavour.
Dried preserved cherries
Add sweetness, fruitiness and chewy pockets of texture.

The step that matters

Strain the milk and mix it hot with the light teacakes.. Hot milk softens the teacakes and helps them absorb the liquid evenly, so the pudding bakes uniformly rather than leaving dry or soggy patches.

Swap the coriander

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lemon, orange, sugar, cinnamon, brandy):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, orange, sugar, cinnamon, brandy. 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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with Dried Cherries 4 See all 22 →

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