Name: To Make Little Castle Puddings
Ingredients: ½ pound butter; 6 ounces powdered sugar; 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel; ¼ teaspoon nutmeg; ½ pound flour; 4 eggs

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Make Little Castle Puddings

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 batter

Beat the butter until creamy.
Gradually add the powdered sugar, lemon peel, nutmeg, and flour.
Beat in the eggs for 30 minutes.

Bake and serve

Grease small molds and pour in the mixture.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.
Serve with 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.

Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the puddings a tender, rich texture.
Eggs: Add structure as they set, along with moisture and richness.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the puddings together as they bake.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the batter and helps the butter cream smoothly.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs for 30 minutes. Beating eggs in gradually and thoroughly keeps the batter smooth and emulsified. Overbeating can incorporate too much air, which may cause the puddings to rise and then collapse as they cool.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, nutmeg, flour, egg):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Lemonthe original
Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, nutmeg, flour, 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.

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To Make Little Castle Puddings