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Dessert

An Italian Pudding

A baked pudding made with puff pastry, cream, French rolls, eggs, nutmeg, apples, orange peel, sugar, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

An Italian 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line the bottom and edges of a dish with puff pastry.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine cream, French rolls, beaten eggs, grated nutmeg, sliced apples, orange peel, sugar, and red wine.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared 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. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Apple + red winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the soft filling into a pudding.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the custard a smooth, tender texture.
French rolls
Soak up the liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Apples
Provide the main fruit flavour and moisture as they soften in the bake.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky base that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the prepared dish. Eggs and cream set as they heat, so the custard only holds its shape if the eggs are well beaten and combined evenly with the other ingredients before baking.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, nutmeg, apple, sugar, red 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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