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Dessert

The Conservative Pudding

A pudding made from ratafia cakes, macaroon cakes, sponge biscuits, egg yolks, cream, and brandy, baked in a mold and with dried cherries or raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and raisin work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

The Conservative Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the ratafia cakes, macaroon cakes, sponge biscuits, egg yolks, cream, and brandy in a bowl until well combined, then soak the cakes in the cream and brandy mixture.

  2. Butter a quart mold and arrange dried cherries or stoned raisins in a decorative pattern inside.

  3. Pour the mixture into the mold.

Cook

  1. Place the mold in a stewpan filled with water and simmer over charcoal for 30 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. Biscuit + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the cakes and cream together and set the pudding as it cooks.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the cakes as they soak.
Ratafia cakes
Act as the main structure, soaking up the liquid to hold the pudding together.
Macaroon cakes
Add body and almond sweetness while soaking up the custard mixture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor while softening the cakes.

The step that matters

Simmering the mold in water. Cooking the custard gently in a water bath keeps the egg yolks from overheating, which would curdle the mixture and leave it grainy. A steady, low simmer sets the pudding evenly without making it rubbery.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, egg, cream, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Apricotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, egg, cream, brandy. 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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