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Dessert

Norwegian Pudding

A chilled pudding made with raisins, pearl sago, lemon peel, sugar, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Norwegian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, bring 1 quart of water to a boil.

  2. Add 1 cup of stoned raisins and 1 small cup of pearl sago, stirring until it thickens enough to mold.

  3. Stir in the grated peel of 1 lemon and sugar to taste.

  4. Before pouring into a mold, mix in 2 tablespoons of currant jelly.

  5. Chill and serve cold with cream or milk sauce flavored to taste.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Lemon and sugar 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

Pearl sago
Thickens the boiling liquid as it cooks, so the pudding sets firm enough to hold a mold shape.
Stoned raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture, and soften as they cook in the liquid.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity tartness, and gives the pudding its colour and flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the sago as it cooks. Pearl sago settles and can stick to the bottom of the pot while it thickens. Constant stirring keeps it from scorching and helps the starch release evenly so the pudding sets smoothly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, lemon, sugar. 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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