Skip to main content
Dessert

An Excellent Apricot Pudding

A pudding made with apricots, cream, sugar, egg yolks, wine, and penny loaf crumbs, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the fruit

  1. Halve the apricots and scald them until soft.

  2. Pound the apricots with some or all of the kernels.

Make the custard

  1. Pour boiling cream over the grated crumbs and let it cool slightly.

  2. Add sugar, beaten egg yolks, and white wine to the cream mixture.

  3. Mix the apricots with the cream mixture.

Bake

  1. Line a dish with paste, pour in the mixture, 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. 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 body of the pudding.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the crumbs into a smooth base.
Egg yolks
Thicken and set the mixture as it bakes, giving a custard-like texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Grated crumbs
Absorb the cream and add bulk, helping the pudding hold its shape.

The step that matters

Bake the pudding until set. Egg yolks set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding runny while overbaking can make it curdle and dry. Watch the set rather than relying only on the clock.

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.

More apricot pudding recipes

Baked 8 See all 61 →

You might also like

Apricot Ice CreamApricot Ice Cream26 recipesMixed Fruit SherbetMixed Fruit Sherbet6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes