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Dessert

Paradise Pudding

A steamed apple pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, brandy, lemon, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Paradise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Chop or grate the peeled and cored apples.

  2. Mix the apples with sugar, bread crumbs, chopped suet, lemon juice, lemon rind, nutmeg, and brandy.

  3. Add the eggs and beat the mixture for a few minutes.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Steam for 3.5 to 4 hours, ensuring no water enters the mold.

  3. Serve with apple sauce or your preferred 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Brandy + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Apples
Provide moisture, tartness and bulk throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tart apples.

The step that matters

Steam with no water entering the mold. Water entering the mold dilutes the batter and makes the texture soggy. A tightly sealed mold and steady gentle steam keep the pudding moist and evenly cooked over the long steaming time.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, bread, lemon, nutmeg, brandy, egg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, lemon, nutmeg, brandy, 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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