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Dessert

Duchess Pudding

A steamed custard-like dessert made with butter, sugar, eggs, macaroons, pistachios, orange marmalade, and ground rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and rice work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Duchess Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch, peel, and coarsely chop the pistachios, then crush the macaroons.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until thick and creamy.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks, then add the macaroons and marmalade.

  4. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks, then gently fold in the ground rice and half the pistachios.

  5. Carefully stir the egg white mixture into the butter mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a soufflé mold and sprinkle the remaining pistachios on the bottom and sides.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold and steam slowly for about 1 to 1.5 hours.

  3. Serve with a suitable 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. Pistachio + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together140 recipes

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

  2. Pistachio + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Orange + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trap air for lift, while yolks add richness and help set the pudding.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender texture.
Macaroons
Crumbs add body, moisture and a characteristic almond-like flavour.
Ground rice
Gives the pudding a light, slightly firm body as the batter sets.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness, acidity and a bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whisked egg whites hold air that gives the pudding its rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or overmixing deflates the foam, leaving a dense pudding.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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