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Dessert

Apricot Pudding, Baked

A baked dessert of apricots, bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Apricot Pudding, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk until boiling, then pour it over the bread crumbs.

  2. Once the mixture is half cold, add the sugar, whisked egg yolks, and sherry.

Add the fruit

  1. Halve the apricots, blanch them until soft, then mash with a spoon, adding a few pounded kernels.

  2. Combine the fruit with the other ingredients.

Bake

  1. Prepare a border of pastry around a baking dish, fill it with the mixture, and bake for 30 to 40 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. Apricot + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour, soft texture and moisture for the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to form the body of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and adds moisture for a custard-like set.
Egg yolks
Set the mixture when baked, giving it a rich, tender structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tart fruit.

The step that matters

Let the milk mixture cool before adding the egg yolks. Eggs added to very hot liquid can scramble and become grainy. Waiting until the mixture is only half cold lets the yolks blend in smoothly and set evenly during baking.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

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