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Dessert

Jam Pudding

A baked jam pudding served with a butter, egg, sugar, and sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Jam 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg, flour, buttermilk, jam, sugar, butter, cinnamon, allspice, and baking soda.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, beat the egg and sugar together with the butter in a bowl set over hot water.

  2. Stir in the sherry wine and mix well.

  3. Serve the pudding warm with the sauce poured over it.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Walnut + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the batter and, beaten into the sauce, helps it thicken and turn smooth.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to help the pudding rise.
Jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavor and moisture to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Sherry wine
Adds aromatic flavor and acidity to the warm sauce.

The step that matters

Beating the sauce over hot water. The egg and sugar mixture can scramble if it gets too hot. Gentle heat from the water bath lets it thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, buttermilk, sugar, butter, cinnamon, allspice):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, buttermilk, sugar, butter, cinnamon, allspice. 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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