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Dessert

A Rich Pudding

A puff pastry pudding filled with cherries, lemon, and brandy, topped with butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Rich Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a dish with rich puff pastry.

  2. Cover the bottom with stoned cherries or dried fruit, sprinkle with grated lemon rind and lemon juice.

  3. Layer thin slices of buttered roll on top, adding sugar between each layer.

Bake

  1. Just before baking, pour over the mixture of beaten eggs, cream, and brandy.

  2. Bake until set.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard, giving the pudding its structure once baked.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the layers brown and taste rich as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tart lemon and fruit.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the egg mixture for a softer set.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, but overbaking makes them curdle and turn watery and rubbery. Pull the pudding once the centre just wobbles, as it will firm further while it cools.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, butter, sugar, egg, cream, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, butter, sugar, egg, cream, brandy. 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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