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Boiled Puddings

A boiled pudding made with water, lemon rind, sugar, arrowroot, wine or brandy, egg yolk, citron rind, raisins, currants, and candied rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil water with lemon rind and lump sugar for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove lemon peel and stir in arrowroot mixed with lemon juice.

  3. Take sauce off heat and add brandy or wine, adjusting arrowroot if needed.

Prepare the mold

  1. For decorative pudding, arrange citron rind and raisins in a mold.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. Mix in pudding mixture when cool, adding egg yolk.

  2. Steam or boil for 2 hours.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Arrowroot + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lump sugar
Provides sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon and the brandy or wine.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the pudding mixture as it sets.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that lifts the flavour of the sauce.
Brandy or white wine
Adds aroma and flavour, best added off the heat so the aroma is not cooked away.

The step that matters

Take sauce off heat and add brandy or wine. Alcohol and its aroma fade with prolonged heat, so adding it off the heat keeps the flavour. The arrowroot sauce also needs to be thick enough before the spirit is stirred in.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, arrowroot, brandy, egg, raisin, orange):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, arrowroot, brandy, egg, raisin, orange. 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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