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Dessert

A Rich Pudding

A rich pudding made with puff pastry, preserved fruit, lemon, bread, eggs, cream, brandy, and baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Rich 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

  1. Line a dish with rich puff pastry.

  2. Cover the bottom with preserved cherries or dried fruit, and add the grated rind and juice of a lemon.

  3. Layer slices of buttered bread on top, adding more preserves and sugar between each layer.

Bake

  1. Just before baking, pour over the mixture of 7 beaten eggs, cream, and plenty of brandy.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, binding the bread and fruit into a sliceable pudding.
Bread
Soaks up the egg custard, forming the body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown lightly on its buttered faces.
Sugar
Sweetens the layers and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Preserved cherries or dried fruit
Provides concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture just before baking. If the custard sits too long, the bread soaks it unevenly and the bottom can turn soggy before the eggs set. Baking soon after pouring keeps the texture even.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, bread, butter, sugar, egg, cream, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, butter, sugar, egg, cream, brandy. 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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