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Dessert

Paradise Pudding

A baked pudding made with butter, sugar, egg yolks, bread crumbs, sweet milk, topped with stewed apples and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Paradise 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.

Make the pudding

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, bread crumbs, and sweet milk. Mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a deep dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Top and finish

  1. Top with a layer of stewed apples.

  2. Beat the egg whites with a little sugar until stiff. Spread the meringue over the top.

  3. Return to the oven to lightly color the meringue.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enriches the custard and helps it set into a tender body.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff meringue that gives the topping its airy structure.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and egg, giving the pudding body and a soft, spoonable texture.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs to form the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites under-beaten or greasy will not hold a stiff peak, so the meringue will be runny or flat. Fat from yolks or bowl residue blocks foam formation, so keep the bowl and whites clean and dry.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, bread, milk. 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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