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Dessert

Scotch Pudding

A baked pudding made with eggs, sugar, butter, rice, and lemon, served with grated sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Scotch 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, egg whites, pounded sugar, melted butter, ground rice, lemon peel, and lemon juice until well combined.

  3. Line a baking dish with puff pastry.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish and bake until set.

  2. Turn out onto a serving plate and sprinkle with grated loaf sugar before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Add richness and help the pudding set into a tender custard.
Egg whites
Add lightness and structure as they set in the oven.
Pounded loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the set texture.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a rich, moist crumb.
Ground rice
Thickens the mixture so it holds its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the centre runny while overbaking can make the custard grainy and dry. Check that the centre has firmed before removing it from the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Raisinfits about as well

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