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Dessert

Pear, Peach and Apple Pudding

A custard pudding made with pears, cloves, citrus peel, eggs, flour, and cream, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pear, Peach and Apple 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.

Stew the pears

  1. Combine pears, cloves, lemon or orange peel, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Stew for 15 minutes.

  3. Transfer the pears to a pudding dish.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add flour and grated nutmeg to the mixture.

  3. Gradually stir in the cream or milk while mixing continuously.

  4. Pour the custard over the pears.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until set.

  2. Serve cold with sweetened 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard into a sliceable, tender structure as they cook.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the custard a soft, smooth texture.
Pears
Provide the fruit base and moisture that the custard bakes over.
Flour
Helps thicken the custard and stabilise its texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the flavour of the pears.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves it runny, while overbaking makes it grainy and watery as the egg proteins tighten and squeeze out liquid.

Swap the pear

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, lemon, cream, egg, sugar, flour, nutmeg. 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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