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Dessert

A George Pudding

A baked pudding of rice, apples, and wine, topped with a thickened wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

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

  2. Drain the rice.

  3. Mash the apples to a dry pulp and mix with rice.

  4. Add white wine, egg yolks, orange, citron, and sugar. Mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a mold with pastry.

  2. Beat egg whites to stiff peaks.

  3. Fold egg whites into the mixture.

  4. Fill the mold.

  5. Bake until golden brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Simmer wine, sugar, egg yolks, and butter until thickened, stirring constantly.

  2. 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

Rice
Cooked until tender, it gives the pudding its body and bulk.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help set it, adding richness and structure.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the mixture and help it rise.
Apples
Mashed to a dry pulp, they add fruit flavour and body to the filling.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to make a soft, creamy base.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the filling and the sauce.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that lightens the filling and helps it rise in the oven. Overmixing or deflating them with a heavy stir makes the pudding dense.

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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