Name: Pastry Cream Ratafia Pudding
Ingredients: 2 ounces ratafias; 2 to 3 glasses sherry; pastry cream (see recipe No. 203); a little essence of ratafia

Why it works: Sherry and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,038 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓

Pastry Cream Ratafia Pudding

Ingredients

2 ounces ratafias
2 to 3 glasses sherry
pastry cream (see recipe No. 203)
a little essence of ratafia

Directions

Prepare

Soak the ratafias in sherry.
Place the soaked ratafias at the bottom of a lined tart tin.

Assemble and serve

Cover the ratafias with pastry cream.
Flavor with a little essence of ratafia.
Finish and serve.

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.

Sherry + creamtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,038 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ratafias: Soak up the sherry and provide the main almond-like flavor and soft texture of the pudding.
Sherry: Softens the ratafias and adds a fortified wine flavor that moistens the base.
Pastry cream: Forms the rich, smooth custard layer that sets the pudding's body and creaminess.

“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.