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Dessert

Amsterdam Pudding

A baked almond and butter pudding with raisins, currants, candied peel, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Amsterdam 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).

  2. Butter a mold and decorate it with raisins, currants, and candied peel.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, ground almonds, and sugar until creamy.

  2. Add the eggs, mixing in the yolks and beaten whites separately.

  3. Stir the rum into the batter before filling the mold.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until set and serve hot or cold.

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Currant + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Butter + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,007 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a tender, creamy texture to the batter.
Sweet almonds (ground)
Provides body and nutty flavour, giving the pudding its dense crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a creamy base when beaten with butter.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Mixing in the yolks and beaten whites separately. Beaten whites trapped in the batter give lift and a lighter texture, while overmixing can deflate them and make the pudding dense.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, almond, sugar, egg, raisin, rum. 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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