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Dessert

Ratafia Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with French roll crumbs, ratafia cakes, milk, butter, eggs, almonds, and sweetened to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Ratafia Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the crumbs of the French roll and ratafia cakes in milk or cream.

  2. Mix in the warmed butter, egg yolks, and egg whites.

  3. Sweeten the mixture to taste and add the pounded almonds and bitter almonds if using.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a baking dish with dried cherries or butter a cake tin.

  2. Sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  3. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish and boil or bake until set.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks and whites bind the custard and set it firm when cooked.
French roll
Crumbed bread soaks up the milk and gives the pudding its body.
Ratafia cakes
Almond-flavoured cakes soften in the liquid and add sweetness and aroma.
Milk or cream
Supplies the liquid that moistens the crumbs and gives a rich, tender texture.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the custard.
Pounded almonds
Add nutty flavour and body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the prepared dish and boil or bake until set. Egg proteins set with heat, so cooking must stop once the pudding is firm; overcooking makes eggs curdle and turn grainy and watery.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, sugar, bread):

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Peasfits about as well

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