Skip to main content
Dessert

The Conservative Pudding

A pudding made from ratafia cakes, macaroon cakes, sponge biscuits, egg yolks, cream, and brandy, baked in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Biscuit and raisin work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

The Conservative Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the ratafia and macaroon cakes with the sponge biscuits.

  2. In a bowl, beat together the egg yolks, cream, and brandy.

  3. Soak the mixed cakes in the cream and brandy mixture.

  4. Butter a quart mold and arrange dried cherries or raisins in a pattern inside.

Cook

  1. Pour the soaked mixture into the mold.

  2. Place the mold in a stewpan surrounded by water.

  3. Simmer over charcoal for 1 hour.

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. Biscuit + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  3. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

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

  5. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Ratafia cakes
Provide the main cake base and a distinct almond-like flavour.
Macaroon cakes
Add chewy texture and almond sweetness to the cake base.
Sponge biscuits
Soak up the custard mixture to give a soft, moist structure.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as it cooks, setting the pudding into a sliceable form.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, making the custard smooth and tender.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour that complements the cakes and cream.

The step that matters

Simmer gently in the water bath. Egg yolks set at moderate heat; if the water boils hard or the heat is too high, the custard can curdle or turn rough and porous instead of smooth and tender.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, egg, cream, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Apricotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, egg, cream, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Baking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesSour Milk BiscuitSour Milk Biscuit27 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipes