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Cherry Pudding

A baked dessert of cherries, cinnamon, flour, and eggs, finished with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cherry Pudding

Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cherry Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cherries

  1. Stir the cherries using a wooden skewer.

  2. Place cherries, cinnamon, 2 tablespoons cold water, and moist sugar in a jar in a saucepan of boiling water; cook until tender and allow to cool.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the cream, then add flour blended smoothly with milk; boil well.

  2. Add sugar and a pinch of salt, then let it cool slightly.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time, add lemon rind, and fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a plain mold, layer cherries and the mixture alternately until full.

  2. Cover with greased paper and bake in a moderate oven (350°F) for about 40 minutes.

  3. Serve with a sweet sauce or fruit syrup.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Yolks enrich the custard and whites, whipped stiff and folded in, lighten and set the pudding.
Flour
Cooked with cream and milk, it thickens the base so the pudding holds its shape.
Cooking cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour and moisture, softened by gentle cooking first.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the cherries and adds a light caramel note to their syrup.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a softer, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites whipped stiff hold the air that lightens the pudding. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates it and leaves a dense result. The custard should be cool enough not to melt the foam.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, flour, egg, cream, milk. 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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