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Dessert

Bakewell Pudding

A layered puff pastry dessert with jam, custard, and crumbled ratafies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Bakewell Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line and border a pudding dish with puff pastry.

  3. Crumble the ratafies and layer them in the dish.

  4. Add a layer of jam, then another layer of ratafies, followed by another layer of jam.

Make the custard and bake

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, 2 egg whites, grated lemon rind, lemon juice, flavoring, and sugar.

  2. Pour the custard mixture over the layered ingredients.

  3. Bake for 45 minutes until set and golden.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Egg yolks and whites thicken the custard as they set in the oven.
Ratafies
Crumbled ratafies soak up custard and add a crisp, almond-like sweetness.
Jam
Jam adds sweetness, fruity flavor and moisture between the layers.
Puff pastry
Puff pastry forms a crisp, flaky case that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Eggs set between about 70 and 85°C, so overbaking can make the custard grainy or watery. Pull it when the centre barely wobbles and the top is golden.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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