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Dessert

Strawberry Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sliced sponge cake, macaroons, strawberry juice, cream, sugar, salt, and topped with whipped cream flavored with sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Strawberry and sherry work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 67 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Strawberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a three-pint mold or pail two-thirds full with alternate layers of sliced sponge cake and macaroons.

  2. In a bowl, combine 1 pint of strawberry juice, 1 cup of cream, ½ cup of sugar, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  3. Pour the mixture over the cake layers.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the mold tightly and steam for 2 hours.

  2. Serve hot with whipped cream flavored with a little sherry.

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. Strawberry + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Strawberry + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

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

  5. Strawberry + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sponge cake
Forms the absorbent base that soaks up the juice and cream mixture.
Macaroons
Add layers that soften as they absorb the liquid, giving a moist, tender texture.
Strawberry juice
Provides the main liquid and fruity flavor that moistens and sets the pudding.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a softer, smoother texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the strawberry juice.

The step that matters

Covering the mold tightly. A tight seal keeps steam trapped around the pudding so it cooks through evenly and stays moist. Gaps let steam escape and can leave the top dry or the center underdone.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberrythe original
  3. Pineapplefits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, sherry. 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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