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Dessert

Exeter Pudding

A layered bread and sponge cake pudding with rum, sago, and jam, baked and served with blackcurrant jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Exeter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix all ingredients except ratafias, sponge cake, and jam together well.

Layer and bake

  1. Coat a well-buttered mold or basin lightly with bread crumbs and cover the bottom with ratafias.

  2. Add a layer of the mixture, cover with slices of sponge cake, and spread thickly with jam.

  3. On top, place a few ratafias. Repeat until all materials are used, ensuring the mixture forms the top layer.

  4. Bake gently at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with a sauce made of 3 tablespoons blackcurrant jelly, a glass of sherry, and a little water, boiled together.

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

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving a moist, tender texture.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb moisture from the mixture.
Sago
Thickens the mixture and gives a soft, slightly chewy texture.
Sponge cakes
Add soft body and absorb the rum and jam flavours within the layers.

The step that matters

Layering the mold. The mixture must form the top layer so the pudding sets evenly and the cake and jam stay within it rather than sinking or drying out during gentle baking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, egg, rum, cream, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, rum, cream, sauce. 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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