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Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A boiled pudding made with water, lemon rind, sugar, arrowroot, brandy or wine, egg yolk, raisins or cherries, sponge cakes, ratifias, macaroons, and candied citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the flavouring

  1. Boil water with lemon rind and lump sugar for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove lemon peel and stir in arrowroot mixed with lemon juice.

  3. Remove from heat and add brandy or wine.

Decorate and mix

  1. For Sir Edwin Landseer's pudding, decorate the mold with citron rind and raisins.

  2. Fold in pudding mixture with egg yolk and steam or boil for 2 hours.

Layer and finish

  1. Arrange raisins or cherries in a buttered quart mold.

  2. Layer in sponge cakes, ratifias, and macaroons.

  3. Add candied citron and mix in egg yolks and remaining egg whites.

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. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Arrowroot + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and helps flavour the boiled syrup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid as it is stirred in, giving the pudding body.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Sponge cakes
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the flavoured liquid.
Raisins or dried cherries
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm flavour that is best added off the heat.

The step that matters

Stir the arrowroot into the hot lemon liquid. Arrowroot is a starch that thickens when heated. Mixing it first with lemon juice into a smooth slurry, then stirring it into the hot liquid, prevents lumps and gives an even, glossy thickness.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, arrowroot, brandy, egg, raisin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, arrowroot, brandy, egg, raisin. 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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