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Dessert

A George Pudding

A pudding of rice, apples, wine, and citrus, baked in a pastry-lined mold.

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 the lemon peel until tender.

  2. Drain the rice.

  3. Mix the drained rice with the boiled apples, white wine, egg yolks, orange, citron, and sugar.

  4. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a mold with pastry.

  2. Fold the egg whites into the rice mixture.

  3. Fill the mold with the mixture.

  4. Bake until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve upside down.

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

Whole rice
Softened in milk, it forms the bulk of the soft, creamy filling.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam and folded in, they lighten the mixture and help it rise.
Apples
Add moisture and body to the filling, softening as they are boiled.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and aids browning on the baked surface.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites into the rice mixture. Whipped egg whites trap air that gives lift. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing, so the pudding stays light and risen in the oven.

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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