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Dessert

Sweet Pudding of Polenta

A sweet pudding made by cooking polenta with milk, butter, sugar, lemon rind, raisins, candied orange rind, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sweet Pudding of Polenta

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk and fruit

  1. In a saucepan, dissolve the sugar in the milk over low heat.

  2. Add the butter, lemon rind, Sultana raisins, and candied orange rind.

Make the polenta

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the polenta with 1 quart of cold milk.

  2. Stir the polenta mixture over medium heat until it boils, about 10 to 12 minutes.

  3. Add salt and cayenne to the polenta mixture.

  4. For a cheaper version, mix treacle and lemon zest into the polenta before adding milk.

Combine and thicken

  1. Combine the polenta with the milk mixture and stir until thickened.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Orange + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Polenta
Its starch swells and thickens the liquid into a firm, spoonable pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the polenta cooks in, giving the pudding its creamy moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the savoury corn and spice flavours.
Butter
Adds fat, which gives the pudding a richer mouthfeel and smoother texture.
Sultana raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the polenta as it boils. Cornmeal starch thickens as it heats and can clump or scorch on the base of the pan. Constant stirring over medium heat keeps the texture smooth and even.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, milk, raisin, orange, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, raisin, orange, pepper. 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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