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Dessert

Prince of Wales Dessert

A chilled dessert of sponge cakes soaked in sherry, set in a cornflour mixture, topped with currant jelly and pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and pistachio share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Prince of Wales Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Dip stale sponge cakes in sherry or syrup and line a mold with them.

  2. Soak the cakes in raspberry juice or wine.

Make the custard

  1. Mix cornflour and arrowroot together, then add boiling milk and cook for a few minutes.

  2. Stir in vanilla and pour the mixture into the lined mold.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once cold, turn out the dessert onto a serving plate.

  2. Top with a large spoonful of red currant jelly and sprinkle with chopped pistachio nuts.

  3. Layer the soaked cakes as above.

  4. Spread whipped cream on top, and decorate with cherries and chopped citron peel if desired.

  5. Serve very cold in the glass dish.

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 + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Red currant + raspberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  3. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Vanilla + raspberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Arrowroot + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornflour
Thickens the milk into a set, sliceable custard that holds the dessert's shape.
Arrowroot
Adds extra thickening power, giving the custard a smooth, glossy set.
Sponge cakes
Form the soft, absorbent base layers that take up the sherry or syrup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starches thicken into custard.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a tart fruit glaze over the top layer.

The step that matters

Cooking the cornflour and arrowroot mixture. Starch must be cooked with the boiling milk for a few minutes so the granules swell and gelatinize; undercooked starch stays chalky and fails to set firmly when cold.

Swap the raspberry

The recipe marks raspberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, arrowroot, milk, vanilla, red currant, pistachio, nuts):

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Raspberrythe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, arrowroot, milk, vanilla, red currant, pistachio, nuts. 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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