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Dessert

Paradise Pudding

A baked apple pudding with breadcrumbs, sugar, currants, and brandy, served with sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Paradise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pare, core, and mince the apples into small pieces.

  2. Mix the apples with the bread crumbs, sugar, currants, salt, nutmeg, and lemon rind.

  3. Beat the eggs.

  4. Moisten the mixture with the beaten eggs.

  5. Beat the mixture well.

  6. Stir in the brandy and pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mold down with a cloth and boil for 1½ hours.

  2. Serve with sweet sauce.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 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
Bind the crumbs and apples together and give the pudding its set structure.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body that soaks up the eggs and holds the pudding's shape.
Apples
Add moisture and tender texture as they cook down in the steam.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the apples and lemon.
Currants
Add chewy bursts of sweetness and fruitiness throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds a warm aroma and flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the mold down and boil. The mold must be sealed so steam cannot escape and the water must keep boiling steadily; otherwise the pudding can turn watery or cook unevenly over the long time.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, apple, bread, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, brandy):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, apple, bread, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, brandy. 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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