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Dessert

German Pudding, and Sauce

A German rice pudding made with milk, rice, suet, sugar, candied rind, raisins, eggs, and served with a sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

German Pudding, and Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Stew the rice in the milk until very tender and dry.

  2. Let the cooked rice cool slightly.

Make and boil the pudding

  1. Mix in the chopped suet, sugar, candied rind, raisins, and beaten eggs.

  2. Boil the mixture in a buttered basin or floured cloth for 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Dissolve the small sugar in the sherry over heat.

  2. Stir the hot mixture into the beaten egg yolks in a small saucepan held above the fire.

  3. Stir until it resembles custard, but do not let it boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the pudding or serve it in a tureen.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Rice + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Swells in milk and sets the pudding's body as it cooks until tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it, giving the pudding structure and a custard-like richness.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sherry or white wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce, balancing its sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over the fire without boiling. Egg yolks thicken gently as they warm; if the sauce boils, the eggs can scramble and curdle, leaving it grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rice, beef, sugar, raisin, egg, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, beef, sugar, raisin, egg, sherry. 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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