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Dessert

Princess Pudding

A lemon arrowroot pudding filled with fruit compote.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Princess Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Blend the arrowroot with a little water.

  2. Add the sugar, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice, mixing well.

  3. Pour 1 pint of boiling water over the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg yolks slightly and stir them in.

  5. Pour the mixture into a mold with a center pipe.

Set and serve

  1. Once cold and set, turn it onto a dish wetted with cold water.

  2. Fill the center with compote of fruits and arrange some fruits around the outside before serving.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Arrowroot
Thickens the mixture as it heats, giving the pudding its set body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and add richness and body to the set texture.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Provides acidity and aromatic flavour from the rind and juice.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble if added to very hot liquid without care. Beat them lightly and stir them in gently so the pudding stays smooth and thickens evenly as it cools and sets.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, 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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