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Dessert

The Protectionist Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with eggs, sugar syrup, lemon, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

The Protectionist Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Break 7 eggs into a deep pan, leaving out 3 of the whites.

  2. In a pot, combine 10 oz. of loaf sugar and 1 cup of water; heat until scum rises.

  3. Pour the hot sugar syrup over the eggs.

  4. Add 1 teaspoon of grated lemon peel and the juice of 1 lemon.

  5. Whisk the mixture for 20 minutes.

  6. Gradually shake in 1 lb. of flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a tin and place it in the oven immediately.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whisked eggs give the batter its structure and lift.
Loaf sugar
Sugar sweetens the pudding and helps keep it tender.
All-purpose flour
Flour sets during baking to give the pudding its body.
Lemon juice
Lemon juice adds acidity that brightens the flavour.
Grated lemon peel
Lemon peel adds fragrant aromatic oils to the batter.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot sugar syrup over the eggs. The syrup is hot enough to start cooking the egg proteins, so adding it to the eggs in one rush can scramble them. Pouring it in while the eggs are being beaten helps them blend into a smooth batter.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour. 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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