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Dessert

Cold Apricot Pudding

A chilled gelatin dessert made with apricot pulp, milk, egg yolks, sugar, almonds, lemon juice, and cochineal for color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cold Apricot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the gelatine in a little water.

  2. Boil the milk.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar in a bowl.

  4. Stir the boiling milk into the beaten yolks and sugar.

  5. Return the mixture to the saucepan and stir over low heat until it thickens (do not boil).

  6. Pour the thickened mixture back into the bowl.

  7. Add the soaked gelatine and let it dissolve.

Add the fruit and set

  1. Stir in the apricot pulp, chopped almonds, and lemon juice.

  2. Strain the mixture into another bowl.

  3. When nearly cold and well stirred, pour into one large or several small molds.

  4. Turn out the molds and serve when completely set.

  5. Decorate the molds with jelly and fruit before filling if desired.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Gelatine
Sets the pudding into a firm, sliceable body as it cools.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard base and add richness and a smooth texture.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming the creamy body of the pudding.
Apricot pulp
Provides the main fruit flavour and moisture to the pudding.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the beaten yolks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apricot flavour.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat without boiling. Egg yolks thicken gently as they warm, but boiling can curdle them into a grainy texture. Keeping the heat low and stirring constantly gives a smooth custard.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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