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Dessert

Italian Pudding

A steamed pudding made with cake crumbs, breadcrumbs, macaroons, candied peel, sultanas, pistachios, eggs, and rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and rum work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 33 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Italian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.

  2. Turn the mixture into a well-buttered mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam gently for 1 to 1½ hours.

  2. Serve with custard sauce.

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. Pistachio + rumtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Egg + rumtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pistachio + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and enrich it, helping it set into a tender, custard-like pudding.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the pudding rise and hold a delicate texture when steamed.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the liquids and give the pudding its body and structure.
Crumbled cake
Adds soft body and absorbs the egg mixture, giving a moist, tender crumb.
Macaroons, pounded
Contribute almond flavor and sweetness, and add texture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Steam gently. Steaming at a gentle heat lets the egg-based mixture set evenly without boiling. Too much heat can make the eggs curdle and turn the pudding spongy or rough in texture.

Swap the pistachio

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Pistachiothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, rum. 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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