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Dessert

Diplomatic Pudding

A custard pudding with gelatin, sponge cakes, ratafias, and fruit, set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and angelica share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Diplomatic Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Line the bottom of a mold with a little clear jelly and let it set.

  2. Decorate the set jelly with chopped cherries and angelica.

Make the custard mixture

  1. Melt the gelatine in the water.

  2. Prepare the custard as usual.

  3. Add sugar, sponge cake, ratafias, cherries, angelica, citron peel (if using), and vanilla to the custard.

  4. When the mixture is cool, stir in the melted gelatine.

  5. Whip the cream and fold it into the mixture when it is completely cold.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared mold when it is nearly set and leave until fully set.

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 + angelicatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Angelica + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Biscuit + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together422 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Gelatine
Sets the custard so the pudding holds its shape when turned out.
Cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when folded in.
Sponge cakes or biscuits
Soaks up the custard and gives the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Custard
Forms the creamy base that carries the other ingredients.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the flavour.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the mold when it is nearly set. If the mixture is too warm, the gelatine will not set properly and the cream may collapse; if it is fully set, the layers will not bond and the pudding will not level evenly in the mold.

Swap the angelica

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, sugar, cream, vanilla):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Angelicathe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, sugar, cream, vanilla. 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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