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Dessert

A Marrow Pudding

A savory pudding made with beef marrow, stale bread, milk, eggs, currants, candied peel, nutmeg, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 Marrow Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Chop half the marrow from the beef bone and set aside the largest piece.

  2. Chop the remaining marrow into small pieces and place in a basin.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the cake in the basin and let it soak.

  2. In another basin, whisk the eggs until frothy.

  3. Beat the soaked cake until smooth, then mix in the whisked eggs.

  4. Add currants, candied orange peel, candied lemon peel, grated nutmeg, grated lemon peel, and sugar to taste.

  5. Pour the mixture into a dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the reserved marrow pieces on top, along with a few currants and thin slices of citron or lemon peel.

  2. Bake in a warm oven (350°F / 175°C) until set.

  3. Optionally, decorate the edges with puff pastry for a decorative touch.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the pudding and help it set firm when baked.
Milk
Soaks into the cake to moisten it and forms the custard base.
Stale cake
Soaks up the milk and gives the pudding its bulk and soft crumb.
Beef marrow
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a rich, savoury depth.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Let the cake soak fully before beating. Stale cake absorbs the hot milk slowly. If it is beaten before it has softened, lumps remain and the pudding bakes unevenly. A fully soaked cake blends smoothly with the eggs and sets into an even custard.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, milk, egg, orange, lemon, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, milk, egg, orange, lemon, 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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