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Dessert

An Excellent Sponge-cake Pudding

A pudding made by soaking sliced sponge cakes in a custard of eggs, milk, sugar, candied peel, lemon rind, brandy, and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

An Excellent Sponge-cake Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Assemble

  1. Slice the sponge cakes and place them in a well-buttered tart dish.

  2. Add the candied peel on top of the cakes.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and stir in the boiling milk with dissolved sugar.

  2. Grate in the lemon rind and let the mixture cool slightly before adding the brandy.

  3. Pour the mixture over the cakes and let it sit for 1 hour.

Bake and serve

  1. Strain the clarified butter over the top and sprinkle with sifted sugar.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and give the pudding its structure as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set into a soft custard.
Sponge cakes
Soak up the custard and form the body of the pudding.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the brandy. Brandy added to very hot custard can evaporate much of its alcohol and aroma, and hot liquid can also curdle or scramble the beaten eggs. Cooling slightly protects both the flavor and the smooth set.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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