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Dessert

Baked Apricot Pudding

A baked dessert made with apricots, sponge cake, eggs, milk, and almond essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Baked Apricot Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Break up and soak the sponge cakes in the milk.

  2. Rub the apricots through a fine sieve, add the sugar and almond essence, and mix with the soaked sponge cake.

  3. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  4. Beat the yolks and add to the cake mixture.

Bake the base

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish and bake for 15 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

Top and finish

  1. Whisk the egg whites to a stiff froth, stir in the castor sugar, and pile on top of the pudding.

  2. Re-bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) until set.

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. Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whipped whites add lift to the topping.
Sponge cakes
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the milk to become soft and moist.
Milk
Supplies moisture that turns the cake into a soft, custard-like texture.
Apricots
Provide fruit flavour and moisture, and sweeten the mixture.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the pudding and stabilises the whipped egg whites in the topping.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg whites to a stiff froth. Stiff whites trap air that lifts the topping and holds its shape. Underwhipped whites stay runny and weep, while overwhipped whites turn dry and grainy.

“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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