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Dessert

Muffin Pudding

A custard‑filled baked pudding made from sliced stale muffins, brandy, cream, cinnamon, lemon peel, sugar, egg yolks, dried cherries, and orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Muffin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the muffins

  1. Cut the muffins into thin slices and place them in a soup plate.

  2. Baste the muffins with brandy.

Make the custard

  1. Simmer cream with cinnamon, lemon peel, and sugar for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir the mixture until cool, then gradually mix in the beaten egg yolks.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a mold and layer the muffins with dried cherries.

  2. Pour the cooled custard over the muffins and let it sit until absorbed.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Muffins
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the custard to set into a soft, spoonable body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving the pudding its rich, tender structure.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming the base of the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and contributes to browning as the pudding bakes.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the muffins before the custard is poured over them.
Dried cherries
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruit flavor between the muffin layers.

The step that matters

Cooling the custard before pouring. If the cream and sugar mixture is still hot when the beaten egg yolks are added, the yolks can scramble instead of thickening smoothly. Stirring until cool first keeps the custard silky and evenly set.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, cream, cinnamon, lemon, sugar, egg, butter. 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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