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Dessert

The Merton Almond Pudding

A baked almond pudding made with ground almonds, sifted white sugar, grated lemon peel, lemon essence, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

The Merton Almond Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Preheat the oven.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  3. Mix in the ground almonds, sifted white sugar, grated lemon peel, and lemon essence.

  4. Beat the mixture for one hour in one direction.

Bake

  1. Oil a baking dish.

  2. Pour the mixture into the dish.

  3. Bake immediately until set.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure, as the proteins set during baking and hold the pudding together.
Ground almonds
Add body and a rich, nutty flavour, with fat adding tenderness.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly as it bakes.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma to the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake immediately until set. Beaten eggs hold air that slowly collapses as the mixture stands, so baking right away keeps the pudding light and helps it set evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, flour, sugar, 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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