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Dessert

Paradise Pudding

A baked apple pudding made with apples, bread crumbs, sugar, currants, spices, lemon, and wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Paradise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the apples after they are peeled and cored.

  2. Mix the chopped apples with the other ingredients.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

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

  3. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body of the pudding, soaking up liquid to form a soft, tender crumb.
Apples
Add moisture and fruity sweetness, softening into the pudding as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a tender, moist texture.
Currants
Add chewy bursts of sweetness and fruit flavour throughout the pudding.
Baking soda
Lifts the batter slightly, lightening the pudding's texture.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a buttered mold. A well-buttered mold keeps the pudding from sticking and tearing when turned out. The mold must also be filled without overflowing, since the pudding expands slightly as it cooks.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, apple, bread, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, apple, bread, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, wine. 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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