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Dessert

Windsor Palace Puddings

A steamed pudding made with rice, apples, sugar, lemon, and egg whites, served with a custard of egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Windsor Palace Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice and apples

  1. Boil the rice in milk until it forms a thick paste.

  2. Pare, core, and scald the apples.

  3. Beat the apples with the rice.

Make the mixture

  1. Add sugar, lemon peel, and lemon juice or essence, and mix well.

  2. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  3. Fold the egg whites into the mixture gently.

Steam and serve

  1. Dip a basin or mold in boiling water.

  2. Pour the mixture into the basin while hot.

  3. Place the basin in a pan of boiling water.

  4. Cook until the egg whites are set.

  5. Serve with a custard made from the egg yolks.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Boiled in milk, it thickens into a paste that gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form a thick, creamy base that keeps the pudding moist.
Apples
Beaten into the rice, they add moisture, body and fruity flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they trap air and set on cooking to give a light, firm texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the apples and lemon.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites trap air that gives the pudding its lightness. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, so the pudding sets dense rather than airy.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, lemon, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, lemon, egg. 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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