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Dessert

A George Pudding

A baked pudding of rice, apples, wine, and spices, topped with a thickened wine and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

A George Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil rice in milk with lemon peel until tender.

  2. Drain the rice and mix with boiled apples, white wine, egg yolks, orange, citron, and sugar.

  3. Line a mold with pastry.

  4. Beat egg whites until frothy and mix with the other ingredients.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the mold and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

  2. For the sauce, simmer wine, sugar, egg yolks, and butter without boiling until thick.

  3. Pour the sauce over the pudding before serving.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole rice
Cooked soft and bound with eggs, it gives the pudding its body and tender crumb.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they lighten the mixture and help it rise and set in the oven.
Apples
Add moisture and mild sweetness, and soften into the filling as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and the sauce, and aids gentle browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but boiling can curdle them into grainy lumps. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and thick.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, lemon, white wine, egg, orange, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, lemon, white wine, egg, orange, sugar. 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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