Skip to main content
Dessert

Delicate Muffin Pudding

A pudding made by boiling milk with lemon peel and spices, then mixing with muffins, almonds, preserved fruit, eggs, brandy, and orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Delicate Muffin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk with lemon peel, laurel or cinnamon, and sugar for 8-10 minutes.

  2. Strain the hot milk over the muffins in a large basin.

  3. Once cool, mash the muffins with a wooden spoon.

Add the filling and cook

  1. Pound the blanched almonds and mix with the preserved fruit, nutmeg, beaten eggs, brandy, and orange-flower water.

  2. Bake in a dish lined with puff pastry or boil in a basin.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 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. Laurel + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together872 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + laureltop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,239 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Muffins
Soak up the hot milk and form the soft, bready body of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable custard as it cooks.
Milk
Softens the muffins and provides the liquid that the eggs set in.
Blanched almonds
Add richness and a fine, slightly oily texture to the filling.
Preserved fruit
Adds concentrated sweetness and chewy pieces throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Let the milk cool before adding the eggs. Eggs scramble when added to very hot liquid. Letting the infused milk cool slightly before mixing in the beaten eggs keeps the custard smooth and evenly set.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

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

More muffin pudding recipes

with Dried Cherries 4 See all 22 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes