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Preserve

To Make an Almond Pudding

A pudding made from soaked penny loaf, lemon cheesecake filling, sweet almonds, eggs, and cream, boiled in a cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Make an Almond Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Soak the crumb of the penny loaf in cream.

  2. Mix the soaked bread with lemon cheesecake filling, sweet almonds, and eggs.

  3. Boil the mixture in a cloth for about one hour.

Serve

  1. Cut ribbon dumplings and place them around the pudding on a dish.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, giving the pudding its firm structure.
Penny loaf
Its crumb soaks up the cream and gives the pudding body.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness so the pudding stays tender.
Sweet almonds
Contribute nutty flavor and a slightly textured bite.
Lemon cheesecake filling
Provides sweetness, tang and flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture in a cloth. Egg-based puddings set gently when the water stays at a steady simmer; a hard boil can make the pudding rough, holey or watery. The cloth should be tied with room for the pudding to expand.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, almond, egg, 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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