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Dessert

Apricot Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with apricots, grated bread, cream, sugar, egg yolks, and madeira or sherry, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Scald the apricots until soft.

  2. Pour boiling cream over the grated bread.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add sugar, beaten egg yolks, and madeira or sherry to the cooled mixture.

  5. Pound the apricots with their kernels.

  6. Mix the pounded apricots with the other ingredients.

Bake

  1. Line a pattypan with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the lined pattypan.

  3. Bake 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. Apricot + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  4. Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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 and most of the body of the filling.
Grated bread
Soaks up the boiling cream and helps thicken the filling as it sets.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and moisture and softens the bread for an even texture.
Egg yolks
Set the custard-like filling in the oven and add richness and colour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the apricots.
Madeira or sherry
Adds a sweet, aromatic depth that complements the apricot flavour.

The step that matters

Let the cream and bread mixture cool before adding the egg yolks. Adding beaten egg yolks to very hot liquid can scramble them, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, evenly set filling.

Swap the apricot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, 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.

More apricot pudding recipes

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