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Dessert

Pound-Cake Pudding

A steamed pudding made from diced pound cake, macaroons, custard, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Pound-Cake Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cake into dice and break the macaroons.

  2. Mix the cake and macaroons, then lightly fill a prepared pint mould.

Make the custard and steam

  1. Beat the egg yolks with cream and enough milk to barely fill the mould.

  2. Add sugar according to the richness of the cake.

  3. Let the mixture stand for an hour before steaming.

  4. Steam for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a sweet sauce.

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

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

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

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

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Bind the custard and help it set firm and smooth when steamed.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the custard, softening the set texture.
Macaroons
Add moisture and almond flavour as they soak into the custard.
Pound cake
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it stands.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand before steaming. Standing gives the cake and macaroons time to soak up the custard evenly, so the pudding is moist throughout rather than dry in pockets or watery at the bottom. Steaming gently then sets the egg proteins without curdling them.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, milk, 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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