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Dessert

Vanilla Pudding

A vanilla pudding made with ratafias, cream, eggs, sherry, apricot jam, and candied cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 608 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Vanilla Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a plain mold and decorate it with cherries and angelica.

  2. Sprinkle the ratafias with sherry.

  3. Spread them with a little apricot jam and cover the mold with these.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs, then add cream, sugar, and vanilla.

  2. Pour into the mold.

  3. Cover with buttered paper.

Steam and serve

  1. Place in a pan of boiling water, ensuring the water comes within the top of the mold.

  2. Simmer slowly for one hour or until set, avoiding a rapid boil to prevent a watery texture.

  3. Before turning out, let it stand for two to three minutes to shrink.

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. Vanilla + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together608 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Vanilla + angelicatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Vanilla + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Apricot + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its firm structure.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the custard.
Ratafias
Soak up sherry and form a moist, flavourful layer under the custard.
Sherry
Moistens the ratafias and adds a sharp, aromatic flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the eggs and cream.

The step that matters

Keep the water below a rapid boil. Egg custards set gently; a rapid boil forces the proteins to tighten too fast, squeezing out liquid and leaving a watery, grainy texture.

Swap the angelica

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, vanilla, sugar, apricot, sherry, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Angelicathe original
  4. Peppermintfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, vanilla, sugar, apricot, sherry, 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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