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Dessert

Baked Puddings

A baked pudding made with sponge cakes, milk, sugar, lemon rind, brandy, clarified butter, and pounded sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard base

  1. Heat 1¼ pints of new milk and dissolve 3 ounces of sugar in it.

  2. Grate the rind of a small lemon into the milk mixture.

  3. Let the mixture cool slightly, then add ½ cup of brandy.

Soak and bake

  1. Pour the mixture over 3 sponge cakes and let it sit for 1 hour.

  2. Strain 1½ ounces of clarified butter over the top or sprinkle with 2 ounces of pounded sugar.

  3. Bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes or longer.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and give the pudding its structure as they cook.
New milk
Forms the liquid base that sets around the eggs and sponge cake.
Sponge cakes
Absorb the custard mixture and hold the pudding together as it bakes.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Bake in a gentle oven. Eggs in the custard turn grainy or curdle at high heat. A low, gentle oven lets the custard set smoothly and evenly through the sponge cake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, brandy, butter, 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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