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Dessert

Princess Pudding

A steamed pudding made with apples, cherries, bread crumbs, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, salt, and served with brandy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,291 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Princess Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, core, and chop the apples and cherries.

  2. Mix the apples, cherries, sugar, bread crumbs, nutmeg, and salt.

  3. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a plain mold and arrange a row of dried cherries around the edge, dust with sugar.

  2. Pour in the mixture and cover with buttered paper.

  3. Steam for 1½ hours.

  4. Serve with brandy sauce.

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. Brandy + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balance the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the edges.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, bread, brandy, egg, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, brandy, egg, nutmeg. 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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