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Dessert

Fbench and Italian Puddings

A custard-based pudding made with eggs, cream, bread, suet, and fruit, sweetened with sugar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Fbench 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).

  2. In a bowl, combine the eggs and cream.

  3. Add enough sliced French rolls to thicken the mixture.

  4. Sweeten with loaf sugar to taste.

  5. Optionally, mix in the chopped suet.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry.

  2. Place the cut apples, stoned raisins, sliced dates, French plums, and candied orange peel at the bottom of the dish.

  3. Pour the egg and cream mixture over the fruit.

  4. Sprinkle with sugar, spice, and grated nutmeg on top.

  5. 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
Bind the mixture and help it set into a custard as it bakes.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the custard.
French rolls
Soak up the egg and cream mixture, thickening it and giving the pudding body.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balances the sweetness.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.

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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