Skip to main content
Dessert

Italian Pudding

A custard dessert made with cream, eggs, apples, port wine, and topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Italian 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. Slice the French roll into the cream until thickened.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  3. Butter the bottom of a baking dish.

  4. Slice the pippins and place them in the dish.

  5. Add orange peel and sugar to the apples.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour in the cream, bread, and beaten eggs.

  2. Cover with puff pastry.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) 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. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Apple + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Thickened with bread to form a rich, custard-like body.
French roll
Soaks up cream to thicken the filling and give it body.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the filling into a custard.
Pippins
Provide tart apple flavor and moisture that softens as they bake.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, browned top over the pudding.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, butter, apple, sugar, port wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, butter, apple, sugar, port 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipes