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Dessert

Empress Pudding

A custard-based pudding made with plums or damsons, bread, butter, sugar, milk, and custard, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Empress Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Assemble

  1. Cut sufficient bread and butter for two layers in a dish.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar and fill the dish with fruit.

  3. Pour over 2 tablespoons of milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with another dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. When half cooked, pour over ½ pint custard and serve hot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Plum + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

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

  5. Plum + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88 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

Plums or damsons
Provide the main fruit flavour and moisture that soaks into the bread as it bakes.
Bread
Forms the layers that structure the pudding and soak up the juices and custard.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown and crisp at the edges.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps it caramelise slightly during baking.
Custard
Adds moisture and richness that soaks through the layers once poured over partway through baking.

The step that matters

Pour the custard at the halfway point. Timing the custard to the point when the pudding is half cooked lets it soak through the bread and fruit without the layers becoming soggy before the bake sets them.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, bread, butter, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, butter, milk. 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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