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Dessert

A George Pudding

A pudding made with rice, apples, wine, and citrus, baked in a pastry-lined mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A George Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice in milk with the lemon peel until tender.

  2. Drain the rice.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the drained rice with the boiled apples, white wine, egg yolks, orange peel, citron, and sugar.

  2. Line a mold or basin with pastry.

  3. Beat the egg whites until frothy and mix them with the other ingredients.

  4. Fill the mold.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Make a sauce from wine, sugar, egg yolks, and butter.

  3. Serve the pudding upside down with the sauce.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Small rice
Cooked until tender, it forms the body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set firm when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they lighten the filling and help it rise.
Apples
Provide moisture, sweetness and a soft fruity texture.
Milk
Softens the rice as it cooks and adds richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until frothy. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to a light froth and folded in gently; overmixing or deflating them leaves the pudding dense rather than light.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, lemon, white wine, egg, orange, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, lemon, white wine, egg, orange, 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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