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Dessert

Ratafia Pudding

A baked pudding made with blanched almonds, ratafia cakes, eggs, cream, wine, and sugar, lined with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Ratafia Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Pound the almonds with a little rose water.

  2. Add the ratafia cakes and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites.

  4. Combine the eggs with the almond mixture, cream, wine, and sugar.

Bake

  1. Line a dish with puff paste and pour in the mixture.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 45 minutes.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ratafia cakes
Soak up the wine and cream, giving the pudding its soft, flavoured body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firm as it bakes.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the pudding hold its structure while baking.
Thick cream
Adds richness and moisture, producing a smoother, creamier custard.
Blanched sweet almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake in a moderate oven for 45 minutes. Egg-based custards set through gentle heat; too hot an oven can curdle the eggs and make the pudding grainy or weeping, so the moderate temperature matters.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, white wine, sugar):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, white wine, sugar. 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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