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Dessert

Baked Puddings

A pudding made by boiling milk with sugar and lemon rind, then baking sponge cakes soaked in the mixture with brandy, butter, and candied peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk and dissolve the sugar in it.

  2. Grate in the lemon rind and let the mixture cool slightly.

  3. Add the brandy while the mixture is still warm.

Soak and bake

  1. Pour the mixture over the sponge cakes and let it sit for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the clarified butter over the top or sprinkle with sifted sugar.

  3. Bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes or longer.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding holds its shape when baked.
Sponge cakes
Provide the absorbent base that soaks up the custard and becomes tender.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the custard that sets during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly on top.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake in a gentle oven. Eggs thicken the custard at moderate heat. A hot oven can curdle the custard and make it grainy or watery, so a gentle oven keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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