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Dessert

Crystal Frozen Pudding

A gelatin-based frozen dessert flavored with lemon, cinnamon, sherry, and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Crystal Frozen Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. In a pot, boil the rinds of the lemons and cinnamon in 1 quart of boiling water.

  3. Add the sugar and pour the boiling mixture over the soaked gelatin, stirring until dissolved.

  4. Strain the mixture and add sherry, a dash of rum, maraschino, and the juice of the lemons.

  5. Adjust sweetness with more sugar if needed and let it congeal to a thick custard consistency.

Freeze and finish

  1. Whip the sweetened cream until stiff and fold it into the jelly mixture.

  2. Freeze the mixture, and when nearly frozen, add the cherries, sliced citron, and chopped almonds.

  3. Pack and freeze well.

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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sherry + rumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable body once it cools.
Sweetened cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when whipped and folded in.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and softens the frozen texture.
Lemons
Provide the main citrus flavour from both rinds and juice.
Almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavour against the smooth frozen base.

The step that matters

Let the mixture congeal to a thick custard consistency before folding in the cream. Gelatine must be partly set so the whipped cream holds its air and the mixture does not separate or turn watery. Folding into a runny base collapses the foam and weakens the final texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, sugar, sherry, rum, cream, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar, sherry, rum, cream, almond. 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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