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Dessert

Marrow Pudding

A custard pudding layered with French rolls, marrow slices, currants, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Marrow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Boil the cinnamon and lemon peel in the milk for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the milk into a basin and let it cool.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and half the egg whites together.

  4. Add the cooled milk, brandy, and nutmeg to the eggs.

Layer and bake

  1. Prepare a baking dish with puff pastry around the rim and butter the bottom.

  2. Slice the French rolls and layer them at the bottom of the dish.

  3. Add a layer of marrow slices and sprinkle with currants.

  4. Repeat the layers until the dish is full.

  5. Pour some custard over the layers about 15 minutes before baking.

  6. Pour the remaining custard in as you place it in the oven.

  7. Bake for about 30 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Brandy + curranttop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set when baked.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the custard set with structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets around the bread.
French rolls
Soak up the custard and provide the structure of the pudding.
Marrow
Adds rich, savoury fat that melts into the custard during baking.

The step that matters

Pour the custard in stages. Bread needs time to soak up custard before baking. Adding some early and the rest just before the oven lets the rolls absorb liquid evenly, so the pudding sets moist rather than leaving dry bread or a soggy, separated base.

Swap the currant

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

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

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