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Dessert

Muffin Pudding

A custard baked with sliced stale muffins, brandy, cream, cinnamon, lemon peel, sugar, eggs, 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

Prepare the muffins

  1. Cut the muffins into thin slices.

  2. Soak the slices in brandy in a soup plate.

Make the custard

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

  2. Stir the mixture until cool.

  3. Gradually mix in the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Butter a moderate-sized mold.

  5. Layer the muffins crust side out with dried cherries and crumbs.

  6. Pour the cold custard flavored with orange flower water into the mold.

  7. Let it stand in a dish of bran until the custard is absorbed.

Bake

  1. Bake 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

Stale muffins
Provide the bread-like structure that soaks up the custard and holds the pudding together.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable body.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and contributes to browning on the surface.
Brandy
Softens the muffin slices as they soak and adds a warm, aromatic flavor.

The step that matters

Let it stand until the custard is absorbed. The muffins need time to soak up the custard evenly; if the pudding goes into the oven before this, it may bake unevenly and stay wet in places.

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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