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Dessert

Canary Pudding

A baked pudding made with eggs, sugar, butter, flour, and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Canary Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter without allowing it to oil.

  2. Add the sugar and finely minced lemon zest.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour while keeping the mixture well stirred.

  4. Whisk the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  5. Beat all ingredients until thoroughly blended.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold or basin.

  2. Boil for 2 hours and serve with sweet sauce.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Set the batter into a firm, light body and bind it together.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich crumb and carries flavour.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a tender texture.
Lemon zest
Adds aromatic citrus oil that brightens the flavour of the pudding.

The step that matters

Melt the butter without allowing it to oil. If butter overheats and separates, its milk solids and water break from the fat. That uneven mixture blends poorly with the sugar and eggs, which can leave the pudding greasy or dense.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, flour. 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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