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Dessert

A George Pudding

A baked pudding of rice, apples, wine and egg, with beaten egg whites folded in and a wine sauce served with it.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A George Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the rice in milk with lemon peel until tender.

  2. Drain the rice and mix with boiled apples, white wine, egg yolks, orange, and citron.

  3. Sweeten the mixture to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a mold with pastry and beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Fold the egg whites into the mixture and fill the mold.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve upside down with sauce made from wine, sugar, egg yolks, and butter, simmering until thick.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the filling as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a tender, custard-like texture.
Apples
Add moisture and tart fruit flavour that balances the richness.
Rice
Softened in milk, it gives the pudding body and a tender bite.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to both the filling and the sauce.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the mixture. The whipped whites hold air bubbles that make the pudding rise and stay light. Stirring them in vigorously or too long deflates the foam, leaving a dense, flat result. Fold gently with a spatula, cutting through and turning the mixture until just combined.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, lemon, white wine, egg, orange, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, lemon, white wine, egg, orange, sugar. 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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