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Dessert

Marrow Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, rice flour, beef marrow, spices, and eggs, baked with fruit and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Marrow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk with rice flour, beef marrow, salt, and cinnamon for 15 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add brandy, sugar, and ratafia cakes.

  3. Mix in the egg yolks and egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a dish lined with puff pastry.

  2. Top with currants, citron, orange peel, and pieces of marrow.

  3. Bake until set.

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. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Beef marrow
Melts into the custard, adding richness and a savoury fat flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving it a soft, sliceable structure.
Egg whites
Add lift and help the custard set into a lighter texture.
Rice flour
Thickens the boiled milk so the custard holds its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs set.
Ratafia cakes
Soak up liquid and add a soft, almond-like sweetness and aroma.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg-thickened custards set as proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves a runny centre, while overbaking can make the eggs curdle and turn grainy.

“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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