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Dessert

Ratafia Pudding

A sweet pudding made with blanched almonds, ratafia cakes, eggs, cream, white wine, and sugar, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Ratafia Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pound the almonds with a little rose water.

  2. Add the ratafia cakes and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and egg whites until well combined.

  4. Stir in the thick cream, white wine, and pounded sugar.

Bake

  1. Combine all mixtures and pour into a dish lined with puff pastry.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

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

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Blanched sweet almonds
Pounded into a paste that gives the pudding its nutty flavour and body.
Ratafia cakes
Add a distinct almond-like sweetness and aroma to the custard.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a smooth, tender texture when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness, helping the filling set during baking.
Thick cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the pudding a silky, moist texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Combine all mixtures and pour into a dish lined with puff pastry.. The egg-based filling sets as it bakes, so it needs to be evenly combined and poured into the pastry before baking. Uneven mixing leaves pockets of unset or curdled custard and weak spots in the set.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, white wine, sugar):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, white wine, 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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