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Dessert

Ratafia Puddijig

A sherry-soaked sponge biscuit dessert with apricot jam, almond custard, and ratafia cakes baked together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Ratafia Puddijig

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour the sherry over the sponge biscuits and let them soak until absorbed.

  2. Place the soaked biscuits at the bottom of a buttered dish and cover with apricot jam.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and egg white with the sugar, milk, and almonds until well combined.

  2. Pour half of the custard over the biscuits and let it stand for 15 minutes.

Bake

  1. Cover the top with ratafia cakes and pour the remaining custard over.

  2. Bake immediately 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. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sherry + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  5. Sherry + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sponge biscuits
Soak up the sherry and form the soft base layer of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as it heats, giving the pudding a set, creamy texture.
Egg white
Adds protein that helps the custard set and gives a lighter structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs to form the custard.
Almonds
Add body and a nutty flavour to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the sherry and jam.

The step that matters

Let the custard stand before baking. Standing lets the custard soak into the soaked biscuits so the pudding bakes evenly and does not separate into a watery layer under a dry top.

Swap the apricot

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

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

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