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Dessert

Empress Pudding

A steamed bread pudding with raisins, candied peel, crystallized fruits, almonds, eggs, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Empress Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a pudding basin or a china mold and flour it well.

  2. Layer sliced candied peel, raisins, and crystallized fruits at the bottom.

Assemble

  1. Fill the mold with thin slices of brown bread and butter, sprinkling sugar, almonds, and more peel between each layer.

  2. Beat the eggs with the milk and pour over the entire mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Tie the mold in a cloth and steam for about 50 minutes.

  2. When cool, turn out of the mold.

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the custard and help the pudding set firm as it steams.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that moistens the bread and softens the layers.
Brown bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the custard as it steams.
Sweet almonds
Add texture and a nutty richness to the layers.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the butter and eggs.

The step that matters

Steam and cool before turning out. Steaming gently sets the egg custard without making it rubbery, and the pudding needs to cool so it holds its shape when unmolded.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, almond, egg, milk, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, almond, egg, milk, sugar. 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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