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Dessert

Raspberry Pudding

A baked raspberry dessert made with fresh berries, sugar, eggs, milk or cream, and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and milk work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 193 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Raspberry Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the raspberries in a tart dish and stir in 10 ounces of sugar.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks of 6 eggs and the whites of 4 eggs until well combined.

  2. Mix the eggs with ½ pint of milk or cream and 2 ounces of sifted sugar.

  3. Whisk the mixture until frothy and pour it over the fruit just before baking.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30 minutes and serve cold, dusted with sifted sugar.

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. Red currant + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together193 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Raspberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and moisture that the pudding is built around.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a soft, tender texture.
Egg whites
Whisked into the mixture to add lightness and help the pudding rise and set.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the set custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and custard and helps soften the raspberries' tartness.

The step that matters

Pour the custard over the fruit just before baking. If the frothy egg mixture stands too long, its air bubbles collapse and the liquid begins to separate, so the pudding bakes denser and less light.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

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