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Dessert

Neapolitan Pudding

A layered pudding made with currant jelly, lemonade, milk, and egg whites, served chilled with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Neapolitan Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the layers

  1. Dissolve currant jelly in hot water.

  2. Thicken with cornstarch until stiff when chilled.

  3. Pour the mixture into a chilled mold and add whipped egg white.

  4. Prepare strong sweet lemonade, scald it, and thicken with cornstarch and whipped egg white.

  5. Pour this as the second layer in the mold.

  6. Scald milk, sweeten, thicken with cornstarch, and add beaten egg yolks and vanilla.

  7. Add this layer to the mold.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill thoroughly and serve with whipped or plain cream.

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

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

  2. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

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

  3. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Vanilla and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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

Currant jelly
Provides the fruity flavor and color of the first layer, and sets with the cornstarch.
Cornstarch
Thickens each layer so it sets firm when chilled.
Egg white
Whipped into the layers to add a light, airy texture.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the final layer.
Egg yolks
Enrich the milk layer, adding richness and body as it thickens.

The step that matters

Thicken with cornstarch until stiff when chilled. Cornstarch must be cooked fully to gelatinize and thicken the liquid. Without enough thickening, the layers will not hold their shape when the pudding is unmolded and served.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, vanilla, cream. 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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