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
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
Halve the apricots and scald them until soft.
Pour the boiling cream over the grated crumbs and let it cool slightly.
Add the sugar, egg yolks, and white wine to the cream mixture.
Pound the apricots with some or all of the kernels.
Mix the apricots with the cream mixture.
Bake and serve
Line a shallow dish with paste.
Pour the mixture into the lined dish.
Bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).
Serve with a little sugar dusted on top.
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.
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Apricot + white winetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together106 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
-
Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,760 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
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Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,630 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 fruit flavour and soft, moist body of the pudding.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the custard and help it set into a tender, sliceable texture when baked.
- Grated crumbs
- Soak up the hot cream and thicken the mixture, giving it body.
- Boiling cream
- Adds richness and moisture, and softens the crumbs for mixing.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly on the surface.
The step that matters
Pour the boiling cream over the grated crumbs and let it cool slightly.. Letting the cream cool slightly before adding the egg yolks prevents the yolks from scrambling, which would leave the custard grainy instead of smooth.
Swap the apricot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, egg, white wine):
- Vanillafits better
- Strawberryfits better
- Raspberryfits about as well
- 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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