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Dessert

Malvern Pudding

A baked fruit pudding made with breadcrumbs, currants, raspberries, sugar, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Malvern Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a pie dish well.

Layer and bake

  1. Spread a layer of breadcrumbs in the dish.

  2. Add a layer of washed and picked red currants and raspberries.

  3. Sprinkle some sugar and bits of butter over the fruit.

  4. Repeat the layers until the dish is full, finishing with breadcrumbs and butter on top.

  5. Bake the pudding for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Turn the pudding into a glass dish.

  2. Whip the cream and spread it over the pudding.

  3. Sift sugar over the top.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + red curranttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together495 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Breadcrumbs
Absorb the fruit juices and form the soft, layered body of the pudding.
Red currants
Add tartness and juice that soaks into the breadcrumbs as the pudding bakes.
Raspberries
Add sweet-tart flavour and juice that moistens the layers during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart fruit and helps balance its acidity.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the top brown.
Cream
Adds a cool, rich topping that contrasts with the warm baked pudding.

The step that matters

Bake the pudding for 1 hour. Baking long enough lets the juices from the fruit soak through the breadcrumbs and set the layers. Too short a bake leaves the centre wet and the crumbs dry on top.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cream. 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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