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Dessert

Prince of Wales Pudding

A baked pudding made from grated sponge cake, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, lemon rind and juice, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Prince of Wales Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Grate the sponge cake and pour the milk over it.

  2. Melt the butter and sugar together in a small saucepan.

  3. Beat the eggs well, then mix all the ingredients together.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Serve immediately as it will fall quickly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Sponge cake
Soaked in milk, it forms the soft, moist body of the pudding.
Butter
Melted with sugar, it adds richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the filling its body.
Milk or cream
Moistens the cake and adds richness to the custard-like filling.

The step that matters

Serve immediately. The pudding is noted to fall quickly after baking. Eggs set as they cool, and the structure weakens as it sits, so serving straight from the oven keeps it at its best.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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