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Dessert

Bombay Pudding

A sweet pudding made from boiled soojee, formed into cakes, fried, and topped with lemon‑flavored syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bombay Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Half roast the soojee, then boil it in water until very thick.

  2. Butter a 9-inch soup plate or similar dish.

  3. Pour the boiled soojee into the dish and let it cool and congeal.

  4. Cut the congealed soojee into eight or more cakes.

Fry and serve

  1. Rub the cakes with the egg yolk, dredge with flour, and fry in ghee until rich brown.

  2. Arrange the cakes on a dish and pour over thick syrup flavored with lemon juice.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Soojee
Forms the thick base that sets as it cools, then holds its shape when cut and fried.
Egg yolk
Binds the flour coating to the cakes so it adheres during frying.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the cakes brown in the ghee.
Ghee
Fries the coated cakes, giving a rich brown colour and flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the soojee until very thick. If the soojee is too thin, it will not congeal when cooled, so the cakes will not hold their shape when cut and fried.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ghee, egg, flour, syrup):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ghee, egg, flour, syrup. 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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