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Dessert

Birds-nest Pudding

A baked apple custard pudding with sugar, lemon peel, eggs, milk, and optional wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Birds-nest Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pare and core the apples, then fill the holes with white sugar and grated lemon peel.

  2. Mix the custard using 7 eggs and 1 quart of milk, seasoning with sugar and lemon or peach water.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the dish with the custard mixture and place it in a pan with a little water.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  3. Serve with cold or wine sauce, or make it sweeter if serving without 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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Apple and sugar 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

Eggs
Set the custard and give it a rich, firm structure as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the custard, giving it a soft, tender texture.
Apples
Hold their shape while baking and add fruity moisture and tartness to the dish.
White sugar
Sweetens the apples and custard and helps them brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake the custard in a water bath. Baking the dish in a pan with a little water moderates the heat, so the eggs set gently without curdling or overcooking at the edges.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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