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Dessert

Macaroon Puddings

A custard-like pudding made with macaroons, cream, eggs, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Macaroon Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Pour boiling cream over macaroons and let cool.

  2. Bruise macaroons smooth with the back of a spoon.

  3. Add beaten yolks and whites of eggs separately, and sugar.

  4. Stir in brandy.

Bake

  1. Put mixture into small cups and bake for 15 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Macaroons
Provide the main body and flavour, softening into a smooth base when soaked in cream.
Eggs
Add structure and set the pudding as they cook, with whites giving lightness.
Cream
Softens the macaroons and adds richness and moisture to the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the rich cream and eggs.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the whites separately. Beaten whites folded into the mixture trap air, which lightens the pudding; if they are deflated or overmixed, the pudding turns dense.

“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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