Skip to main content
Dessert

Spice Pudding

Layered sponge cake with raisins, currants, citron, and custard, baked and served with rich sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Spice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

  1. Layer sliced sponge cake in a pudding dish.

  2. Add a layer of seeded raisins, currants, and thinly sliced citron, with a little butter.

  3. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

  4. Pour 1 quart of boiled custard over the layers.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 15 minutes.

  2. Serve with rich sauce.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Raisin + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Raisin + saucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

What each ingredient does

Sponge cake
Forms the soft, absorbent base layers that hold the custard and fruit.
Boiled custard
Moistens the layers and sets as it bakes, giving the pudding its creamy texture.
Seeded raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chew between the cake layers.
Currants
Add small bursts of sweetness and tartness between the cake layers.
Citron
Adds a bitter, aromatic citrus note that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour the custard over the layers. The custard must soak through the cake layers so the pudding sets evenly as it bakes. If the layers are left dry or the dish is not filled, parts of the pudding may bake unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, butter, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes