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Dessert

Spanish Pudding

A baked dessert made with butter, sugar, eggs, grated apple, orange rind, apricot jam, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot 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 ↓

Spanish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dish

  1. Roll out the puff pastry thinly and line a dish with it.

  2. Spread some apricot jam in the bottom of the dish.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  3. Mix in the grated orange rind and grated apple thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the lined dish and bake for 30 minutes.

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 + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

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

  2. Orange + apricottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Butter + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,458 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to create a light, tender texture and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps beat air into the creamed butter.
Apple
Adds moisture and fruity flavour to the filling.
Seville orange rind
Adds aromatic, slightly bitter citrus flavour that balances the sweetness.
Puff paste
Forms a crisp, flaky base that holds the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs in one at a time. Adding eggs gradually, beating well after each, lets the emulsion form smoothly. Adding them all at once can curdle the creamed butter and sugar, which can make the texture uneven.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, apple, apricot. 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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