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Dessert

A Very Rich Pudding of Prime Ripe Fruit

A rich custard pudding made with ripe fruit, wine, custard, cream, eggs, breadcrumbs, sugar, and brandy, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

A Very Rich Pudding of Prime Ripe Fruit

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. Press the fruit through a sieve or grate the apples and pears.

  2. Scald the fruit in white wine for a few minutes, then remove skins and stones.

  3. Beat the fruit in a mortar until smooth and let it cool.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the cooled fruit with custard, cream, eggs, bread crumbs, and sugar.

  2. Add a glass of brandy or Sherry wine to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a dish lined with puff pastry.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Apricot + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Apricot + brandytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. White wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together620 recipes

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the filling its body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the filling so it holds together when baked.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Rich custard
Provides the creamy base that carries the fruit and sets when baked.
Apricots
Supply the main fruit flavour and moisture once pressed into a purée.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set. Eggs set as the custard heats, and overbaking makes them curdle and weep, leaving a grainy, watery texture. Pull the dish when the centre just wobbles, since it firms further as it cools.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, white wine, cream, egg, bread, sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, white wine, cream, egg, bread, sugar, brandy. 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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