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Dessert

Ratafia Pudding

A sweet dessert made with soaked sponge biscuits, apricot jam, custard of eggs, milk, sugar, almonds, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Ratafia Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Pour sherry over sponge biscuits and let soak until absorbed.

  2. Layer soaked biscuits in a buttered dish and cover with apricot jam.

Make and layer the custard

  1. Beat yolks of 4 eggs and 1 egg white with sugar, milk, and almonds.

  2. Pour half the custard over the biscuits.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 15 minutes.

  4. Cover with ratafia cakes.

  5. Pour remaining custard over the cakes.

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. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sherry + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  5. Sherry + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks and white set the custard, giving the pudding its structure once baked.
Milk
Liquid that forms the custard with the eggs, giving a soft, creamy texture.
Sponge biscuits
Soak up the sherry and form a moist, tender base under the custard.
Sherry
Soaks into the biscuits, adding moisture and a sharp, aromatic flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sherry and almonds.
Almonds
Blanched and pounded almonds add body and a nutty flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for 15 minutes. Standing gives the biscuits time to absorb the custard before the next layer goes on, so the pudding bakes evenly and stays moist rather than separating into wet and dry zones.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, biscuit, egg, sugar, milk, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, biscuit, egg, sugar, milk, almond. 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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