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Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A pudding made with almonds, eggs, sugar, bread crumbs, lemon rind, butter, and apricot marmalade, boiled for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the Jordan and bitter almonds finely.

  2. In a bowl, mix the chopped almonds, egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, bread crumbs, lemon rind, butter, and apricot marmalade until well combined.

  3. Transfer the mixture into a buttered pudding mold.

Boil and serve

  1. Cover the mold with buttered paper or tie a cloth securely around it.

  2. Boil the pudding for a full hour.

  3. Serve with German or common sweet wine 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. Almond + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Jordan almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and help it set into a tender, custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help bind the pudding as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding body and structure.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture for a softer crumb.
Apricot marmalade
Adds fruity sweetness and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Securing the mold while boiling. If the paper or cloth is not sealed tightly, water can enter the mold and make the pudding soggy and watery. A tight cover keeps the steam inside, so the pudding cooks evenly and holds its shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, egg, sugar, bread, butter, apricot):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, egg, sugar, bread, butter, apricot. 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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