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Dessert

Swedish Pudding

A milk-based pudding with flour, eggs, orange‑flower water, lemon, almonds, and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Swedish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix 1 ounce of flour into a smooth batter with some of the milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk with ½ ounce of sugar and a thin strip of lemon peel.

  3. After a few minutes, remove the lemon peel and stir in the flour batter.

  4. Stir well and boil for 5 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and mix in the beaten yolks of the 3 eggs.

  6. Return to the stove briefly to cook the eggs, then add the orange-flower water.

Assemble

  1. Make a syrup with the remaining ½ ounce of sugar, ¼ pint of water, and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice.

  2. Spread jam in the bottom of a glass dish.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Its starch thickens the milk into a smooth, spoonable custard as it boils.
Eggs
The yolks set on gentle heat, adding richness and body to the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour and egg yolks thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the syrup.
Lemon
The peel scents the milk while the juice adds bright acidity to the syrup.

The step that matters

Adding the yolks and returning the pan to the stove. Yolks added to a very hot mixture can scramble and turn grainy. Removing the pan from the heat first, then reheating gently, lets the yolks thicken the custard smoothly.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, egg, lemon, almond. 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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