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Apricot Pudding, Baked

A baked apricot pudding made with apricots, bread crumbs, milk, eggs, lemon juice, sugar, and optional sherry, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Apricot Pudding, Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs.

  2. Let them soak for 30 minutes.

  3. Rub the apricots through a fine sieve.

  4. Mix the apricots with lemon juice, sugar, sherry, 3 egg yolks, and 1 egg white.

  5. Prepare a pie dish with lined edges as per the Apple Amber recipe.

  6. Add the soaked milk and bread crumbs to the apricot mixture.

  7. Pour the mixture into the pie dish.

Bake the pudding

  1. Bake in a steady oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Add the meringue and finish

  1. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of castor sugar.

  3. When the pudding is three-quarters baked and set, pile the meringue on top.

  4. Sprinkle the surface with castor sugar.

  5. Optionally decorate with strips of crystallized apricots.

  6. Return to the oven and bake until the meringue is a pale fawn color.

  7. Serve hot or cold.

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. Apricot + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks set the custard, and whipped whites form the light meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to give the pudding its body and soft texture.
Milk
Provides liquid that, with the eggs, forms a tender baked custard.
Apricots
Supply the main fruit flavor and moisture once sieved into a smooth pulp.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apricot flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the meringue at three-quarters baked. Meringue should go on only once the custard is nearly set. Egg proteins firm up as they heat, so a runny base can let the topping sink or weep.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, bread, sugar, milk, egg, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, bread, sugar, milk, egg, sherry. 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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