Skip to main content
Dessert

Marrow Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, marrow, sponge cake, citrus peel, nutmeg, wine, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,746 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Marrow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the mixture

  1. Boil the milk with cinnamon and lemon peel.

  2. Add a small pinch of salt, chopped beef marrow, citron, orange peel, grated nutmeg, crumbled sponge cake, sugar, and wine or brandy.

  3. Mix in the eggs.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Alternatively, omit the eggs and fill with plain custard before baking.

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. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef marrow
Adds richness and a soft, fatty texture to the pudding.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding into a firm, sliceable body.
Sponge cake
Soaks up the liquid and gives the pudding its tender crumb.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the other ingredients soak into and set within.
Wine or brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, sharp note that balances the richness.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins set as they heat, so the pudding firms up. Baking too long pushes them too far, leaving the texture curdled, dry, or rubbery.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, beef, nutmeg, sugar, wine, egg. 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 marrow pudding recipes

Beef 18Bone 3 See all 29 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes