Skip to main content
Dessert

Primrose Pudding

A steamed butter and sugar pudding flavored with lemon rind and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Primrose Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Work the butter and sugar in a bowl until creamy.

  2. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a little flour to avoid curdling.

  3. Whip the mixture for at least 20 minutes.

  4. Add the lemon rind, vanilla, remaining flour, and a pinch of salt.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter one or two timbale molds and pour in the mixture.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and steam for about 2 hours.

  3. When done, turn out onto a hot dish and serve with wine sauce, vanilla custard, or sabayon sauce.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Set during steaming to give the pudding its structure and body.
Flour
Gives the pudding body so it holds its shape after steaming.
Castor sugar
Creams with butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding flour while beating in the eggs. Eggs added to a creamed butter and sugar mixture can curdle and separate. A little flour helps bind the emulsion and keeps the batter smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, vanilla. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes