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Malaga Iced Pudding

A chilled custard pudding with soaked fruit and brandy, sherry, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Malaga Iced Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Soak the diced fruits in the brandy, sherry, and lemon juice.

Freeze and serve

  1. Mix the soaked fruits with the custard just before freezing.

  2. Mould the mixture prettily and turn it out as directed.

  3. Serve chilled.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pear + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich custard
Provides the creamy, rich base that freezes into a smooth texture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and alcohol keeps the frozen pudding softer.
Sherry
Adds a mellow, wine-like flavour to the soaked fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the custard and fruit.
Diced oranges
Adds juicy pieces of fruit with fresh citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Mix the soaked fruit just before freezing. Alcohol and acid from the soaking liquid lower the freezing point and can soften the custard, so long contact before freezing can leave the pudding less firm.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (brandy, sherry, pear, almond, orange):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sherry, pear, almond, orange. 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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