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Dessert

Polka Pudding

A sweet, thickened milk pudding flavored with rose water, lemon essence, and sugar, set in a mold and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Polka Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the arrowroot in a pint of cold milk.

  2. Beat the eggs well and add them to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the butter, rose water, essence of lemon or ratafia, and sugar.

Make the custard

  1. Boil 2 pints of milk in a double boiler.

  2. While boiling, stir in the other ingredients without removing the boiler from the stove.

  3. Let the mixture boil until thick.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the thickened mixture into a mold to cool.

  2. Turn the pudding out of the mold.

  3. Serve the pudding cold.

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 + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Starch that swells and thickens the milk as it heats.
Eggs
Add richness and help the pudding set as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Let the mixture boil until thick. Arrowroot starch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, and stirring while it boils helps keep the mixture smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, butter, rose, lemon, sugar):

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, rose, lemon, 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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