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Dessert

Fruit Gelatine Pudding

A chilled fruit dessert made with gelatin, citrus, figs, dates, bananas, nuts, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Gelatine Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in ½ cup cold water.

  2. Add 1 pint boiling water, the juice of the lemons, and 2 cups sugar.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it stand until it begins to thicken.

Set and serve

  1. Stir in all the fruit cut into small pieces.

  2. Let it harden before serving.

  3. Serve with rich custard or cream and sugar.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Fig + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Fig + datestop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Orange + figtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

  5. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly structure as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the set gel a softer, more pleasant texture.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness of the gel.
Figs
Add fruit texture and natural sweetness to the set pudding.
Dates
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the set pudding.
Bananas
Add soft texture and mellow sweetness throughout the gel.

The step that matters

Strain and wait for the gel to begin thickening before adding fruit. Gelatine sets as it cools. If the mixture is still very liquid when the fruit goes in, the pieces will sink or float unevenly instead of staying suspended in the gel.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, fig, dates, banana, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, fig, dates, banana, 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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