Skip to main content
Dessert

Paradise Pudding

A boiled apple and currant pudding with bread crumbs, eggs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,918 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Paradise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine chopped apples, currants, sugar, bread crumbs, eggs, lemon rind, lemon juice, and salt in a bowl and mix well until combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pot.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve with a liquid sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  3. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Currant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft, tender crumb.
Apples
Add moisture and tart, fruity flavor as they soften during cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the apples and lemon.
Currants
Add small bursts of chewy sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 1.5 hours. Long, steady heat is what sets the beaten eggs and crumbs into a firm pudding. Cooking too briefly leaves the centre wet and loose, so the full time matters.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, bread, egg, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipes