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Dessert

Fairy Pudding

A chilled jelly dessert made with crabapple or quince jelly, water, corn starch, lemon juice, sugar, egg whites, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Fairy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Dissolve the jelly in boiling water.

  2. Thicken the mixture with corn starch.

  3. Add lemon juice and sugar to taste.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then pour it over the beaten egg whites.

Mold and serve

  1. Mold the pudding and serve with whipped cream.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Quince + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Quince + corntop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Jelly
Provides the fruit flavor and sweetness that give the pudding its base.
Corn starch
Thickens the dissolved jelly so it holds its shape when cooled and molded.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam, they add airy lightness to the pudding's texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the jelly.

The step that matters

Pouring the cooled mixture over the egg whites. If the jelly mixture is still hot, it can deflate the beaten whites and collapse the foam. Letting it cool first keeps the airy texture intact while the starch-thickened liquid sets.

Swap the quince

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, lemon, sugar, egg, cream. 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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