Name: An Excellent Apricot Pudding
Ingredients: 12 large apricots; 1 pint boiling cream; 4 ounces sugar; 4 egg yolks; 1 glass white wine; crumbs from a penny loaf; pastry for lining the dish

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 the fruit

Halve the apricots and scald them until soft.
Pound the apricots with some or all of the kernels.

Make the custard

Pour the boiling cream over the crumbs and let it cool slightly.
Mix the cream, sugar, egg yolks, and white wine together.
Combine the apricot mixture with the other ingredients.

Bake

Line a dish with pastry, pour in the mixture, and bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Apricot + white winetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together106 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,760 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,630 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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 main fruit flavour and body of the pudding.
Egg yolks: Set the custard and add richness and structure as it bakes.
Cream: Adds fat and richness, giving the pudding a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the fruit.
Crumbs: Soak up the cream and help thicken the pudding's body.

The step that matters

Pound the apricots with the kernels. Pounding breaks the fruit down into a smooth purée so it blends evenly into the custard. Adding only some or all of the kernels adjusts the almond-like bitterness and aroma, so the flavour should be tasted as you go.