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Dessert

Muffin Pudding

A custard pudding made with sliced stale muffins, brandy, cream, cinnamon, lemon peel, sugar, eggs, and dried cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Muffin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the muffins into thin slices and place them in a soup plate.

  2. Baste the slices with brandy.

  3. Simmer the cream with cinnamon, lemon peel, and sugar for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir until cool.

  5. Gradually mix in the beaten egg yolks.

  6. Butter a moderate-sized mold.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the muffins, crust side out, with dried cherries and crumbs.

  2. Pour the cold custard into the mold.

  3. Let it sit in a dish of bran until the custard is absorbed.

  4. Bake for 30 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Muffins
Provide the bread structure that soaks up the custard and sets into a soft pudding.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable body.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, producing a smooth, tender custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Brandy
Soaks into the muffin slices, adding aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Let it sit in a dish of bran until the custard is absorbed. The muffin slices must soak up the cold custard fully before baking; if they stay dry or floating, the pudding bakes unevenly and its texture turns patchy. Eggs in the custard set during baking, so the soaked bread should be evenly saturated first.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (brandy, cream, cinnamon, lemon, sugar, egg, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, cream, cinnamon, lemon, sugar, egg, butter. 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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