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Dessert

Plum-pudding Glace

A frozen dessert made with milk, cream, chocolate, fruit, and eggs, set in a mold and chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and raisin share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum-pudding Glace

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate base

  1. Boil the milk and dissolve the chocolate in it.

  2. Rub the arrowroot with a little cold milk or water, then stir it into the chocolate mixture.

  3. When thickened, carefully stir in the 2 eggs mixed smooth with a few drops of cold water.

  4. Set aside to cool.

Add the fruit and cream

  1. Add the fruit and flavorings.

  2. Whip the cream and mix in the sugar.

  3. At the moment of freezing, add the whipped cream mixture to the chocolate.

Freeze and pack

  1. Pack into a mold and cover tightly.

  2. Set the mold in a bucket with ice and salt until ready to serve.

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. Arrowroot + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

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

  5. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the chocolate milk mixture into a smooth, creamy base.
Eggs
Add richness and help the base set with a custard-like body.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and dark color of the base.
Cream
Adds fat for a smooth, soft texture that resists icy crystals.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point for a softer scoop.

The step that matters

At the moment of freezing, add the whipped cream mixture to the chocolate.. Whipped cream adds air and fat for lightness. If the base is too warm or has been left to sit, the cream can deflate or melt, and the texture becomes dense and icy. Timing the addition just before freezing keeps the whipped cream light.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (arrowroot, milk, raisin, peach, cream, chocolate, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against arrowroot, milk, raisin, peach, cream, chocolate, 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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