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123 Biscuit Pudding

A steamed pudding made from Huntley biscuits, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon peel, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 697 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

123 Biscuit Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Soak the biscuits in the milk until soft.

  2. Beat the soaked biscuits until smooth.

  3. Add sugar, eggs, lemon peel, and salt; mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin and cover with a paper cap.

  5. Steam for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil sugar in water until it thickens.

  2. Add lemon juice and boil for 5 more minutes.

  3. Optionally, add 1 tablespoon of sherry.

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. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

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

  4. Biscuit + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Biscuits
Soak up milk and bind with eggs to give the pudding its body.
Eggs
Set during steaming to firm the pudding and hold its shape.
Milk
Softens the biscuits and adds moisture so the mixture can be beaten smooth.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the sauce thicken when boiled.

The step that matters

Steam for 1 hour. Steaming gently sets the egg and biscuit mixture into a moist, firm pudding. Covering the basin with a paper cap keeps condensation from making the top wet.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, milk, sugar, 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.

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