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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A gelatin-based dessert made with pineapple juice, lemon juice, grapes, and a custard dressing topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 911 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a saucepan, combine pineapple juice, lemon juice, and dissolved gelatine in cold water. Heat until scalding.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the well-beaten egg whites.

  3. Cut the pineapple into small pieces and add the halved grapes.

  4. Arrange the fruit in a mold.

  5. Pour the gelatine mixture over the fruit.

  6. Let the pudding congeal.

Make the custard and serve

  1. For the dressing, cook the milk, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla until it thickens to a soft custard.

  2. Serve the pudding with the custard and top with flecks of whipped cream.

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. Pineapple + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Grape + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,596 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the juice mixture so the pudding holds its shape when cooled.
Egg whites
Whipped into the hot mixture to add a light, airy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a smooth, soft custard as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tart lemon and pineapple juices.
Malaga grapes
Add juicy pieces of fruit and sweetness to the set pudding.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard dressing.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating can make them curdle or scramble, leaving the custard grainy. Heat gently and stir until it coats a spoon.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, egg, grape, sugar, milk, vanilla, cream):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, egg, grape, sugar, milk, vanilla, cream. 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.

More fruit pudding recipes

Steamed 91Boiled 17Cold 14English 14Baked 12Tapioca 11 See all 210 →

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