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Dessert

Marrow Pudding

A baked pudding made with stale bread crumbs, fresh marrow, raisins, currants, spices, and optional lemon, brandy, almonds, and candied citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Marrow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Pour boiling milk over stale bread crumbs in a bowl and cover with a plate.

  2. Shred the fresh marrow and mix it with raffeins, currants, and the soaked bread.

  3. Sweeten to taste, then add cinnamon and nutmeg.

Assemble and bake

  1. Lay puff pastry around the edge of a shallow pudding dish and mark it neatly.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the dish.

  3. Optionally, add grated lemon peel, brandy, almonds, candied citron, and lemon before baking.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 25 to 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to give the pudding body and a soft, custard-like structure.
Fresh marrow
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a moist, tender texture as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness that contrast with the soft filling.
Currants
Add small bursts of tart sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread crumbs in boiling milk. The crumbs must fully absorb the hot milk so they soften evenly. Dry or lumpy crumbs stay gritty and do not bind the filling into a smooth, tender pudding.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, raisin, currant, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, raisin, currant, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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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