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Dessert

Italian Pudding

A baked pudding made with sliced French rolls, cream, apples, candied peel, wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and red wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 148 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Italian Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the sliced French rolls in 1 pint of boiled cream sweetened with loaf sugar.

  2. Beat the eggs and add them to the soaked rolls once cool.

  3. Line a well-buttered dish with puff paste and fill the bottom with sliced apples.

Assemble

  1. Sprinkle sugar and sliced candied peel on top of the apples, then add the red wine.

  2. Pour the cream mixture over the apples and edge the dish with puff paste.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 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. Apple + red winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

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

  3. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

French rolls
Soak up the cream and custard, giving the pudding a soft, bread-based body.
Eggs
Set with the warm cream as it bakes, binding the pudding into a custard.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the bread and forming the custard base.
Apples
Provide fruit flavour and tender texture beneath the custard layer.
Puff paste
Forms a crisp, buttery pastry case that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs once the cream has cooled. Eggs scramble if added to very hot cream, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth custard. Letting the mixture cool first lets the eggs thicken it gently as it bakes.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, red 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.

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