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Dessert

Macaroon Pudding

A dessert made with macaroons, ladyfingers, sweet wine, egg yolks, sugar, and topped with almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Macaroon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the macaroons and lady fingers on a plate.

Make the wine mixture

  1. In a saucepan, boil the sweet wine and sugar together.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the egg yolks.

  3. Pour the mixture over the cakes.

Top and finish

  1. Make a meringue.

  2. Pour the meringue over the entire dessert.

  3. Top with almonds.

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. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Wine + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

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

  4. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lady fingers
Absorb the liquid and soften, giving the dessert its moist, tender body.
Macaroons
Soak up the wine mixture and add a chewy, almond-flavoured texture.
Sweet wine
Adds moisture and fruity flavour, and softens the cakes as it soaks in.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the mixture, adding richness and a custard-like body.
Sugar
Sweetens the wine mixture and helps balance the flavour of the wine.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot mixture over the egg yolks. Hot liquid can scramble egg yolks if it is added too quickly. Pouring it in slowly while stirring gradually warms the yolks, so they thicken smoothly instead of setting in lumps.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, 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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