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Dessert

Five Minutes Pudding

A quick baked pudding made with flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, vanilla, and jam, served warm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Five Minutes Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA very brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix flour and sugar.

  3. Make a well in the center, break in eggs, and beat well.

  4. Add vanilla and baking powder, then mix until combined.

  5. Grease a Yorkshire pudding tin and line it with paper.

  6. Pour mixture into prepared tin and spread evenly.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake for five minutes in hot oven.

  2. Turn pudding onto paper sprinkled with castor sugar.

  3. Spread warm jam on top and roll quickly.

  4. Optionally decorate with jam and shredded coconut.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Provide structure and lift, setting the pudding as they cook.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the pudding rises.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly on the surface.

The step that matters

Pour mixture into prepared tin and bake in a hot oven. The tin and oven must be very hot before the batter goes in. Hot fat and hot air make the batter puff quickly, and a cold start leads to a flat, dense pudding.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Lemonfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg. 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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