Skip to main content
Dessert

Melon Pudding

A baked pudding made with apples, melon, breadcrumbs, eggs, milk, butter, cloves, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and melon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 86 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Melon 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 the fruit

  1. Peel and cut the apples and melon.

  2. Stew the fruit for 15 minutes, adding sugar and the cloves tied in muslin.

  3. Remove the cloves from the fruit and place a layer of fruit over the breadcrumbs.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a buttered dish, place a layer of breadcrumbs.

  2. Repeat layers until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of breadcrumbs.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them with the milk.

  4. Pour the egg and milk mixture over the pudding.

  5. Spread the butter in bits over the top.

  6. Bake the pudding for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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 + melontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together86 recipes

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

  2. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Melon + clovetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together232 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Breadcrumbs
Form the soft layers that soak up the egg and milk custard.
Apples
Add tart flavour and moisture that softens as the fruit stews.
Melon
Contributes sweet, delicate fruit flavour and moisture to the layers.
Eggs
Set with the milk to bind the pudding into a custard-like texture.
Milk
Moistens the breadcrumbs and forms the custard with the eggs.
Butter
Adds richness and encourages browning on the top surface.

The step that matters

Pour the egg and milk mixture over the pudding. The custard must soak evenly through the breadcrumb layers before baking. If it pools or the layers are left dry, the pudding can bake unevenly, with dry pockets and a loose, wet base.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, melon, milk, butter, egg, sugar. 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 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes