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Dessert

Princess Pudding or Cold Soufflee

A chilled dessert made with preserved fruits, claret jelly, whipped cream, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and apricot work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 341 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Princess Pudding or Cold Soufflee

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Set a mold thickly with claret jelly.

  2. Whip the cream until very stiff.

Make and fill

  1. Stir in the chopped fruits, melted gelatine, and caster sugar.

  2. Fill the center of the mold with the whipped cream and fruit mixture.

Unmold and serve

  1. Turn it out and serve with additional whipped cream if desired.

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. Ginger + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together341 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Angelica + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Angelica + apricottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Heavy cream
Whipped into a foam that traps air, giving the soufflé its light, airy body.
Gelatine
Sets the cream and fruit mixture so it holds its shape when turned out.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the tartness of the preserved fruit.

The step that matters

Folding in the gelatine and fruit. Whipped cream is a foam held up by trapped air. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, so the soufflé sets dense rather than light. Stir gently, and make sure the gelatine is fully melted so it sets evenly.

Swap the angelica

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, apricot, cream, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Peppermintfits about as well
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, apricot, cream, sugar. 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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