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Dessert

Paradise Pudding

A steamed pudding made with apples, currants, bread crumbs, eggs, lemon rind, sugar, brandy, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Paradise Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix all the ingredients well together.

  2. Turn the mixture into a well-buttered mold or basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with a suitable 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a tender, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Provide body and absorb moisture, giving the pudding its soft, cake-like structure.
Apples
Add moisture and a tart, fruity flavour that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps brown its surface slightly.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming for 2 hours. Keep the water at a gentle, steady simmer. Gentle heat lets the eggs set evenly through the pudding, while vigorous boiling can make the texture coarse or crumbly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, bread, egg, lemon, nutmeg, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, bread, egg, lemon, nutmeg, brandy. 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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