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Dessert

Crystal Palace Pudding

A gelatinous pudding made with cornflour, milk, cream, isinglass, sugar, vanilla, eggs, and crystallised cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Crystal Palace Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix cornflour with milk and cream in a basin.

  2. Add isinglass to the mixture.

  3. Sweeten the mixture with loaf sugar.

  4. Flavor the mixture with vanilla.

  5. Pour the mixture into a lined saucepan.

  6. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  7. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  8. Stir in beaten egg yolks until the mixture is nearly cold.

Set and serve

  1. Rinse small tin moulds with cold water.

  2. Place crystallised cherries at the bottom and sides of the moulds.

  3. Pour the mixture into the moulds to fill them.

  4. Pack the moulds in ice.

  5. Leave the moulds for 2–3 hours.

  6. Dip the moulds in hot water to loosen the pudding.

  7. Wipe the moulds clean.

  8. Turn the puddings onto a fancy dish.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cornflour
Thickens the milk and cream mixture into a smooth, sliceable set.
Isinglass
Gelatine-like protein that helps the pudding set firm when chilled.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and help thicken the custard as it cools.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, soft texture in the set pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornflour thickens.

The step that matters

Stir in beaten egg yolks until the mixture is nearly cold. Adding yolks to a very hot mixture can scramble them. Letting it cool nearly to cold first, while stirring, lets the yolks thicken it smoothly without curdling.

“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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