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Dessert

Alexandra Pudding

A baked milk and egg pudding with apricot jam, bread crumbs, ratafias, and sherry garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Alexandra Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

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

  2. In a basin, combine the milk, castor sugar, and yolks of the eggs.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread a thick layer of apricot jam at the bottom of a pie dish.

  2. Sift a few bread crumbs over the jam, then pour in the egg mixture.

  3. Bake for about 1 hour.

  4. Before the pudding is done, dip some ratafias in sherry for 1 minute and place them on top as a garnish.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks and beaten whites set the custard and give it a light, airy body.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set into a soft custard.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it stay tender as it bakes.
Apricot jam
Forms a sweet, fruity layer at the base of the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb some liquid and add body beneath the custard.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Eggs set as they heat, so overbaking can make the custard curdle, weep, or turn rubbery. Remove the pudding when the centre barely wobbles and let residual heat finish it.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

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