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Dessert

Boiled Guava Pudding

A steamed pudding made with guava fruit, suet paste, cloves, lemon peel, lemon juice, and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Boiled Guava Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Line a well-buttered mold with suet paste.

Fill and seal

  1. Fill the mold with halved guava fruit.

  2. Add cloves, grated lemon peel, and lemon juice.

  3. Pour in the syrup from the tin.

  4. Cover with paste and tie a cloth over the top.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for about 3 hours.

  2. Turn out and pour over a rich custard.

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. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Guava + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27 recipes

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

  3. Guava + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Clove + syruptop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet paste
Forms a sturdy, tender crust that holds the fruit and syrup during steaming.
Guava fruit
Provides the main fruit flavour and soft, moist filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet guava flavour.
Syrup from the tin
Adds sweetness and moisture that soaks into the pudding as it steams.

The step that matters

Covering and tying the cloth. The seal must be snug enough to keep steam and water from entering the mold, otherwise the pudding can turn soggy and the flavour dilutes during the long steam.

Swap the guava

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, lemon, syrup):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Guavathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, lemon, syrup. 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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