Skip to main content
Dessert

Cereal-fruit Pudding

A baked pudding made with cold boiled cereal, sliced fruit, sugar, buttered cracker crumbs, and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Cereal-fruit Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a medium oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer the cold boiled cereal.

  2. Cover with a layer of sliced fruit and sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Repeat the layers and finish with a layer of buttered cracker crumbs.

  4. Bake until the fruit is soft and the crumbs are brown.

  5. Serve warm with cream.

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 + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Apple + datestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pear + datestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled cereal
Forms the bulk of the pudding and sets into a soft, spoonable structure as it bakes.
Sliced fruit
Adds moisture and natural sweetness, softening as it bakes into the cereal layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit layers and helps the fruit caramelize slightly during baking.
Buttered cracker crumbs
Adds fat and toasty flavour, browning on top for a crisp contrast to the soft layers.

The step that matters

Bake until the fruit is soft and the crumbs are brown. Baking long enough lets the fruit soften and its juices blend into the cereal, while the buttered crumbs brown through the Maillard reaction. Underbaking leaves the fruit firm and the topping pale and bland.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, apple, pear, sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, apple, pear, sugar, cream. 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 PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipes