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Dessert

Richmond Maids of Honour

A custard pudding made with milk, eggs, lemon, currants, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Richmond Maids of Honour

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the curd

  1. In a bowl, mix the new milk with the beaten eggs.

  2. Add this mixture to the boiling water in a saucepan.

  3. Pour in the lemon juice and remove the curd to a sieve as it rises.

Mix the filling

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the yolks of four eggs and mix with the curd.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind, clotted cream, nutmeg, cinnamon, and currants; mix well.

Bake

  1. Line and butter patty pans with puff paste, fill with the mixture, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the curd and bind the filling into a custard-like texture as they cook.
Egg yolks
Add richness and smoothness to the filling through extra fat and emulsifiers.
New milk
Forms the base of the curd, which sets when heated with the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Acidity curdles the milk, separating the solids that form the curd.
Clotted cream
Adds fat for a richer, softer texture in the baked filling.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruit flavour throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Removing the curd as it rises. Lemon juice curdles the hot milk quickly, and the curd rises to the surface. Removing it promptly into a sieve drains off excess whey, so the filling is firm and not watery once baked.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, lemon, cream, nutmeg, cinnamon, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, lemon, cream, nutmeg, cinnamon, brandy. 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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