Skip to main content
Dessert

Muffin Pudding

A pudding made from muffins, milk, brandy, almonds, cherries, and eggs, baked or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Muffin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk with the lemon peel and sugar for 10 to 12 minutes.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the muffins and let it cool.

  3. Once cold, add the cherries, brandy, blanched and pounded almonds, and beaten eggs. Mix everything well together.

Cook and serve

  1. Either boil in a basin or bake in a dish lined with puff pastry 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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable pudding when cooked.
Muffins
Provide the bread base that soaks up the milk and gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Soaks into the muffins and forms the liquid that sets with the eggs.
Dried cherries
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sweet almonds
Add richness, nutty flavour and a little fat to the custard.

The step that matters

Let the milk cool before adding the eggs. Eggs added to very hot milk can scramble or cook unevenly instead of setting smoothly. Cooling the mixture first lets the eggs thicken the custard gently and evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, brandy, egg, almond, sugar, nutmeg. 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.

More muffin pudding recipes

with Dried Cherries 4 See all 22 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipes