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Dessert

German Pudding, and Sauce

A German rice pudding made with suet, raisins, candied rind, and served with a sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

German Pudding, and Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a pot, stew the rice in the milk until very tender and dry.

  2. Let it cool slightly, then mix in the chopped suet, sugar, candied rind, raisins, and beaten eggs.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin or a well-floured cloth.

  4. Boil the pudding for 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, dissolve 1½ ounces of sugar in the sherry over heat.

  2. Stir the hot mixture into the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  3. Hold the saucepan high above the fire and stir until it thickens like custard, avoiding boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce over the pudding or in a separate tureen.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Rice + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens into a tender, dense body that gives the pudding its bulk.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, providing moisture and a soft, creamy texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it firm, and thicken the sauce like custard.
Beef suet
Adds fat that enriches the pudding and keeps it moist and rich.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens both the pudding and the sherry sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce over heat. Egg yolks set at low temperatures and scramble if they get too hot. Stirring gently and keeping the sauce below boiling lets it thicken smoothly into a custard.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rice, beef, sugar, raisin, egg, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, beef, sugar, raisin, egg, sherry. 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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