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Dessert

Swiss Puddings

A baked dessert of butter, currants, sugar, biscuit crumbs, candied peel, lemon rind and juice, topped with icing and citron peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 697 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Swiss Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar, currants, candied peel, and biscuit crumbs to the melted butter.

  3. Stir in the grated lemon rind and juice.

  4. Beat the eggs and mix them into the mixture.

Bake and finish

  1. Half fill patty pans lined with pastry and bake for 25 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Once cooled, spread icing on top and place a piece of citron peel on each.

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. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, rich filling.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, biscuit, sugar, lemon. 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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