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Dessert

An Excellent Sponge Cake Pudding

A pudding made by soaking sponge cakes in a custard of eggs, milk, sugar, and candied peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

An Excellent Sponge Cake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Butter a tart dish and slice the sponge cakes into it.

  2. Place the candied peel on top of the cakes.

Make the custard

  1. Whisk the eggs thoroughly in a bowl.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the new milk and add it to the eggs.

  3. Grate in the lemon rind and mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture over the sponge cakes and let it soak.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Eggs
Whisked eggs set the custard, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable body when baked.
New milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the sponge and forms the custard with the eggs.
Sponge cakes
Absorb the custard as it soaks, forming the soft, tender base of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves into the milk before it is combined with the eggs.
Candied orange or lemon peel
Adds concentrated citrus sweetness and aroma that cut through the rich custard.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture soak into the sponge cakes. The sponge needs time to absorb the custard before baking; if it is baked too soon, dry patches remain and the custard does not distribute evenly through the pudding.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, lemon. 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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