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Dessert

Drench and Italian Puddings

A fruit pudding made with French rolls, eggs, cream, and various dried fruits, baked in a puff pastry-lined dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Drench and Italian Puddings

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

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

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine sliced French rolls, eggs, and cream until thickened.

  2. Sweeten the mixture with loaf sugar and add chopped suet if desired.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a baking dish with puff pastry.

  2. Layer the bottom with chopped apples, raisins, dates, plums, and candied orange peel.

  3. Pour the pudding mixture over the layered fruits.

  4. Grate nutmeg on top and bake until golden brown.

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 + plumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  3. Plum + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Dates + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the bread and cream into a pudding.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and moisture so the bread soaks up a soft, custardy filling.
French rolls
Soak up the egg and cream mixture to form the body of the pudding.
Apples
Add moisture and a tart note that balances the sweetness of the fruit and sugar.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the top brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Pour the pudding mixture over the layered fruits. The custard needs to soak evenly into the bread and set; pouring too fast or unevenly can leave dry or soggy spots and an uneven set.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, sugar, apple, dates, plum, orange):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, apple, dates, plum, orange. 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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