Skip to main content
Dessert

Apricot Pudding

A baked dessert of apricots, bread crumbs, cream, sugar, egg yolks, Madeira wine, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Apricot Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel the apricots and blanch them in water until soft.

  2. Remove the stones from the apricots.

Make the custard base

  1. Pour boiling cream over the bread crumbs and let it stand until half cold.

  2. Add sugar, egg yolks, and Madeira wine to the mixture and mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a dish lined with thin puff pastry.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Apricot + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  5. Cream + madeira winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the fruit flavour and soft body that forms the pudding's centre.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the cream to give the pudding body and a soft, set texture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the crumbs into a custard-like base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as it bakes, helping it set into a smooth custard.
Madeira wine
Adds aromatic depth and a rich, slightly fortified flavour to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the cream-and-crumb mixture cool until half cold before adding the yolks. Egg yolks scramble if added to very hot liquid, which can leave the custard grainy. Cooling it partly lets the yolks blend in smoothly and thicken gently during baking.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, sugar, egg, madeira wine. 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.

More apricot pudding recipes

Baked 8 See all 61 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes