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Dessert

Apricot Pudding

A steamed batter pudding with apricots, served with a sweet lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apricot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, salt, sugar, melted butter, and sweet milk.

  2. Beat in the beaten eggs and mix until aerated.

Steam the pudding

  1. In well-oiled cups, layer batter, sliced apricots, and more batter.

  2. Steam for 20 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, boil sugar and water for 5 minutes.

  2. Add lemon juice and butter, then bring to a boil.

  3. Dissolve cornstarch in cold water, add to the sauce, and boil again.

  4. Stir in lemon juice to taste and serve with the pudding.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pudding its body.
Eggs
Add structure and help the batter set and rise as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, more tender crumb and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps brown the surface of the pudding and sauce.
Sliced apricots
Add fruity sweetness and acidity that contrast with the mild batter.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce to a glossy, pourable consistency when heated.

The step that matters

Dissolve the cornstarch in cold water before adding it to the sauce. Cornstarch clumps if it hits hot liquid dry. Suspending it in cold water first lets the granules separate, so when the mixture boils the starch thickens the sauce smoothly.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, egg, milk, sauce, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, milk, sauce, 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.

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