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Dessert

An Excellent Apricot Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with apricots, cream, sugar, egg yolks, wine, and bread crumbs, baked in a pastry-lined dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

An Excellent Apricot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the apricots until soft.

  2. Pound the apricots in a mortar, including some or all of the kernels.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated crumbs of the penny loaf with the boiling cream.

  2. Once the mixture is half cold, add the sugar, egg yolks, and white wine.

  3. Mix the apricots with the other ingredients.

Bake

  1. Line a shallow dish with pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined dish.

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

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

  2. Apricot + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour and, once pounded, body and sweetness to the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as it bakes and add richness to the custard.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and moisture, and softens the bread crumbs into the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Grated crumbs of penny loaf
Soak up the cream and help give the pudding a soft, set body.

The step that matters

Once the mixture is half cold, add the sugar, egg yolks, and white wine.. If the cream is still very hot when the yolks go in, they can scramble instead of blending smoothly. Letting it cool partly first helps keep the custard smooth and lets it set evenly in the oven.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, white 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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