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Dessert

Iced Pudding a LA Percy Bysshe Shelley

A chilled pudding made with egg yolks, cream, sugar, vanilla sugar, maraschino liqueur, and mixed dried fruits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 334 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Iced Pudding a LA Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, cream, sugar, and vanilla sugar until well combined.

  2. Stir in the maraschino liqueur and freeze the mixture until it is quite stiff.

Add fruit and freeze

  1. Fold in the mixed dried fruits and freeze again until firm.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a mold and embed it in rough ice and salt to keep it cold.

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. Vanilla + peartop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Vanilla + pineappletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together911 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + peartop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help the mixture set smooth and custard-like when frozen.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving a soft, creamy texture rather than an icy one.
Sugar
Lowers the freezing point and keeps the frozen dessert soft enough to scoop.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds alcohol, which resists freezing and keeps the texture softer and more scoopable.
Mixed dried fruits
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruity sweetness throughout the frozen custard.

The step that matters

Freezing the stiff base before folding in the fruit. The base must be frozen until quite stiff so the dried fruit stays suspended rather than sinking, and the mixture keeps a smooth texture. Freezing too long or too little changes how evenly it sets.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, sugar, vanilla, pineapple):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Bananafits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, vanilla, pineapple. 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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