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Dessert

The Conservative Pudding

A rich pudding made with ratafia cakes, macaroons, sponge biscuits, egg yolks, cream, brandy, and dried cherries or raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and raisin work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

The Conservative Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the ratafia and macaroons in the cream.

  2. Beat together the soaked cakes, egg yolks, cream, and brandy.

  3. Butter a quart-sized mold and arrange dried cherries or raisins in a pattern at the bottom.

  4. Pour the mixture into the mold.

Cook

  1. Place the mold in a stewpan surrounded by water and simmer for 1.5 hours over low heat.

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. Biscuit + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

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

  5. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, custard-like pudding when heated.
Ratafia cakes
Soak up the cream and brandy, giving the pudding its soft, moist body and flavour.
Macaroons
Absorb the liquid and add almond sweetness and a tender, crumbly texture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, boozy flavour that complements the sweet cakes.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, helping the cakes soften and the custard set smoothly.

The step that matters

Simmer gently in a water bath. Egg yolks set into a custard when heated slowly. Keeping the water at a low simmer, rather than a hard boil, prevents the eggs from curdling and leaving the pudding grainy or watery.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, egg, cream, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Apricotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, egg, cream, brandy. 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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