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Dessert

Paradise Pudding

A baked pudding made with bread crumbs, apples, wine, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Mince the apples.

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the eggs and stir them into the bread crumbs and other ingredients.

  2. Dust the currants with a small quantity of flour before adding them to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and boil for 1½ hours.

  2. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when heated, binding the bread and fruit into a firm pudding.
Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the liquid.
Apples
Add moisture and fruity sweetness as they cook.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the apples and currants.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the baking dish and cook it for 1½ hours. Eggs set gradually as they heat, so the pudding turns firm and custard-like only if it is cooked long enough at a steady oven heat. Too short a cook leaves it wet in the centre.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, apple, wine, lemon, nutmeg, flour):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, apple, wine, lemon, nutmeg, flour. 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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