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Dessert

Muffin Pudding with Dried Cherries

A pudding made by boiling milk with spices, soaking muffins, and baking with dried cherries, almonds, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Coriander and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Muffin Pudding with Dried Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Make the milk infusion

  1. Boil the milk with coriander seeds, lemon peel, and sugar for 10 minutes.

  2. Place the muffins in a pan and strain the milk over them.

Make the pudding

  1. Once cold, mash the muffins with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add brandy, dried cherries, nutmeg, pounded almonds, and beaten eggs to the mixture.

  3. Mix everything together and either boil in a basin or bake in a dish with a pastry crust.

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. Coriander + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Coriander + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Coriander + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a tender, custard-like pudding when cooked.
Muffins
Provide the bulk and soft crumb that soak up the warm milk.
Milk
Moistens the muffins and forms the custard base with the eggs.
Dried cherries
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.
Blanched jordan almonds
Add body and nutty richness to the mixture once finely pounded.

The step that matters

Mashing the muffins after they cool. The muffins must be fully cold and mashed smooth so the beaten eggs blend in evenly. Warm or lumpy muffins can scramble the eggs or leave pockets of dry bread in the set pudding.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, sugar, brandy, nutmeg, almond, 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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