Skip to main content
Dessert

Ratafia Puddings

A custard-like dessert made with ratafia biscuits, milk, eggs, and candied cherries, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pistachio and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Ratafia Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the moulds

  1. Grease some danol moulds with butter.

  2. Place a few chopped almonds in each mould, turning them to cover the sides. At the bottom, place a cherry and a few chopped pistachio nuts.

Make the pudding

  1. Crush the ratafia biscuits and mix with sugar, grated lemon rind, and ginger.

  2. Pour boiling milk over the biscuit mixture and stir.

  3. Add the well-beaten eggs and mix thoroughly.

  4. Pour the mixture into the prepared moulds.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover with buttered paper and place in a pan of boiling water, ensuring the water comes within 1 inch of the top.

  2. Simmer very gently for about 1 hour or until set.

  3. Lift out the moulds and let them stand for a minute or two before turning out.

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. Pistachio + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

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

  2. Biscuit + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ratafia biscuits
Crushed biscuits form the body of the pudding and absorb the hot milk to set a soft structure.
Eggs
Beaten eggs coagulate during gentle heating, setting the pudding so it holds its shape when turned out.
Milk
Moistens the biscuit crumbs and, with the eggs, forms the custard that sets around them.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the flavour of the biscuits and brandy-free base.
Chopped browned almonds
Add a toasted, nutty flavour and crunch to the outside of the pudding.

The step that matters

Simmer very gently. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, while a hard boil makes the custard curdle and turn spongy or watery. Keeping the water barely simmering gives a smooth, evenly set pudding.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, sugar, milk, egg, pistachio, nuts, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, sugar, milk, egg, pistachio, nuts, almond. 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 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesBaking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipes