Skip to main content
Dessert

English Almond Pudding

A baked almond pudding made with butter, powdered sugar, almonds, eggs, orange flower water, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

English Almond Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the butter and powdered sugar until smooth.

  2. Add the chopped almonds, salt, orange-flower water, eggs, egg yolks, and cream. Mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish.

  2. Cook in a bain-marie in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  5. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the batter.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the custard-like mixture set smoothly.
Almonds
Provide body, flavour and a fine texture to the pudding.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the pudding soft.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves smoothly into the butter.

The step that matters

Cook in a bain-marie until set. A bain-marie surrounds the dish with gently heated water, so the eggs set gently and evenly. Baking too hot or too long can make the eggs curdle and the texture grainy.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, almond, egg, cream. 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.

More almond pudding recipes

You might also like