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Dessert

Princess Pudding

A gelatin dessert made with Cox's sparkling gelatine, water, wine, lemon juice, sugar, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Princess Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Add boiling water, wine, lemon juice, and sugar to the soaked gelatine.

Finish and set

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and stir into the mixture when it begins to thicken.

  2. Pour into a large mould and set in ice water in a cool place.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add a light, airy texture to the set pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sugar and brightens the flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Wine
Adds flavour and liquid to the jelly base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stir the whites in only once the mixture begins to thicken. If it is still thin, the whites deflate and separate; if it is too set, they will not blend in evenly and will leave lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, egg. 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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