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Dessert

Baked Almond Pudding

A baked custard made with almonds, bitter almonds, egg yolks, cream, lemon juice, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Baked Almond Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Finely beat the almonds and bitter almonds.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the beaten almonds, egg yolks, cream, lemon juice, and bread crumbs until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a dish with a pastry crust or into cups without crust.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Almond + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together858 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help the pudding set as it bakes.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving a soft, tender custard texture.
Almonds
Provide the main nutty flavour and body of the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the pudding its structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Baking the pudding. Egg yolks set as they heat, so the pudding needs enough time in a preheated oven to firm up. Pulling it too early leaves it runny in the centre, while overbaking can make it grainy or curdled.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, egg, cream, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, egg, cream, bread. 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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