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Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A sweet pudding made with lemon rind, sugar, arrowroot, wine, and candied fruit, steamed or boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the water with the lemon rind and lump sugar for about 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the lemon peel and stir in the arrowroot mixed with the strained lemon juice and optional orange juice.

  3. Take the sauce off the heat and add the brandy or wine, adjusting the arrowroot if using wine.

Decorate and cook

  1. To make Sir Edwin Landseer's puddings, decorate the mold with citron rind and muscatel raisins.

  2. Fill the spaces with currants and candied rind.

  3. Add the pudding mixture when cool and stir in the egg yolk.

  4. Steam or boil for 2 hours.

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. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Arrowroot + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Egg yolk
Enriches the mixture and adds richness and body to the set pudding.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the lemon syrup and balances its acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour to the sauce.
Brandy or wine
Adds aroma and flavour to the sauce once it is off the heat.

The step that matters

Adding the brandy or wine off the heat. Alcohol boils off and its aroma fades when heated, so adding it after removing the sauce from the heat keeps more flavour. Wine also changes the sauce's thickness, so the arrowroot may need adjusting.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, arrowroot, brandy, egg, raisin, currant):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, arrowroot, brandy, egg, raisin, currant. 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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