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Dessert

Spanish Pudding

A dessert made with sponge cakes, jam, sherry, egg whites, sugar, vanilla, and topped with red jelly or cherries and angelica.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and angelica match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 170 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Spanish Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the base

  1. Split the sponge cakes.

  2. Spread each piece with jam.

  3. Place the jam-covered sponge cakes in a dish.

  4. Pour enough sherry or maraschino to soak them thoroughly.

Make the topping

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Add the sugar and vanilla.

  3. Pile the mixture on top of the sponge cakes, covering them entirely.

Bake and serve

  1. Place in a cool oven (300 °F / 150 °C) for a few minutes to dry.

  2. When cold, decorate with red jelly or cherries and angelica.

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. Vanilla + angelicatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Sherry + angelicatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light, airy meringue topping that sets when dried.
Sponge cakes
Form the soaked base that holds the jam and sherry beneath the topping.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour between the sponge layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold firm peaks, because under-whipped whites will collapse and run on the cakes, while sugar added too early or to overbeaten whites can make the foam grainy or weepy.

Swap the angelica

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

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

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