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Dessert

Iced Pudding

A chilled fruit and cream dessert made with apricots, greengages, cherries, angelica, mixed peel, brandy, isinglass, milk, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and brandy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Iced Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prepare the chopped fruits and place them in a bowl.

  2. Pour the brandy over the fruit.

Make the cream base

  1. Dissolve the isinglass and sugar by boiling them in the milk for 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Strain the mixture into a bowl, then gradually add the cream, stirring until it begins to thicken.

  3. Fold in the fruit until well mixed with the cream.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a round mold and let it set in rough ice for at least 2 hours.

  2. Turn the pudding out onto a glass dish and serve immediately.

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 + brandytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Apricot + angelicatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  5. Brandy + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Isinglass
Sets the cream mixture into a firm, sliceable pudding as it cools.
Double cream
Adds richness and a smooth, thick body to the pudding.
Milk
Carries the isinglass and sugar and forms the base of the cream mixture.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the hot milk.
Apricots
Provide fruity flavour and colour through the pudding.
Curaçao or french brandy
Adds an aromatic, spirited flavour to the fruit.

The step that matters

Adding the cream gradually. Isinglass begins to set as the mixture cools. Adding the cream slowly and stopping once it just begins to thicken keeps the base smooth and pourable, so the fruit mixes in evenly instead of clumping or setting unevenly in the mold.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, brandy, milk, sugar, cream. 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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