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Dessert

Capirotada, a Spanish Pudding

A Spanish bread pudding made with green onions, lard, water, raisins, cheese, and stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Capirotada, a Spanish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the chopped green onions in hot lard until soft.

  2. Add hot water, sugar, raisins, salt, and coriander leaves; stir to combine.

Layer and bake

  1. Wet the slices of stale bread in the mixture and layer them in a baking pan.

  2. Pour a little juice over the bread and add pieces of cheese.

  3. Repeat the layering until the pan is filled.

  4. Pour the remaining mixture over the top and bake until browned.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  2. Onion + coriandertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Onion + cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaks up the liquid mixture and forms the body of the pudding.
Hot lard
Carries the onion flavour and adds richness and fat to the dish.
Cheese
Melts into the bread layers, adding savoury richness and body.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness that plump slightly in the moist layers.

The step that matters

Pour the remaining mixture over the top and bake until browned.. The top needs enough liquid to soak in and set the layers, and browning depends on the surface drying and caramelising in the oven. Bake until the top is browned and the centre is set, so the pudding holds together when cut.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, sugar, coriander, bread, cheese):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sugar, coriander, bread, cheese. 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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