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Dessert

Savoy Pudding

Savoy pudding is a custard-like dessert made from stale Savoy cake, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, brandy, and candied peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Savoy Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Crumble the cake, then boil the milk and pour it over the crumbled cake, and beat until smooth.

  2. Add the butter and chopped candied peel, then mix in the egg yolks and beat well.

  3. Stir in the brandy and let the mixture sit in a cool place for one hour.

  4. Beat the mixture again and pour it into a buttered dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, sweeten, and flavor them.

  3. Pile the sweetened egg whites on top of the pudding and return it to the oven for a few minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale savoy cake
Provides the bulk structure, soaking up the milk to form a soft, tender crumb.
Milk
Moistens the crumbled cake so it softens into a smooth, spoonable base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the set pudding.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the base, while whipped whites add lift to the topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding base and the egg white topping.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whites beaten to firm peaks trap air that lifts and sets the topping. Under-beaten whites collapse and weep, while a few extra minutes in the oven can dry or over-brown the surface.

“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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