Skip to main content
Dessert

Almond Pudding

A baked pudding made with soaked bread, milk, sugar, almonds, eggs, vanilla, and citron or currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond 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 the batter

  1. Soak the bread in the milk.

  2. In a bowl, mix the soaked bread, sugar, pounded almonds, and vanilla extract.

  3. Beat the egg whites separately.

  4. Beat the egg yolks separately.

  5. Fold the beaten whites and yolks into the mixture.

  6. Add the citron or currants.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish set in a pan of water.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  3. Serve immediately after removing from the oven.

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 + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Whites trapped by beating and folded in add lift, while yolks set the pudding into a custard-like body.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it softens and forms the soft crumb that gives the pudding its body.
Pounded almonds
Add nutty flavour and a fine, tender texture to the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep the crumb moist and tender.
Milk
Soaks the bread and adds moisture so the batter bakes soft rather than dry.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring hard knocks that air out, so the pudding rises less and bakes denser.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, sugar, almond, vanilla, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, almond, vanilla, egg. 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.

More almond pudding recipes

Baked 26Boiled 20Lemon 13Chocolate 6Chestnut 5Frozen 3 See all 210 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipes