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Pumpkin Pudding

A cooked mixture of pumpkin, apples, apricot jam, sugar, lemon juice, and zest, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Peel and cut the pumpkin into convenient pieces.

  2. Parboil the pumpkin pieces.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the parboiled pumpkin with the sliced apples.

  2. Add apricot jam, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding basin.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

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 + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pumpkin + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pumpkin + appletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together281 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

Pumpkin
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it a soft, moist body when cooked.
Apples
Add moisture and a light fruity sweetness that balances the pumpkin.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to its soft, tender texture.
Apricot jam
Adds concentrated fruit flavour and sweetness along with some moisture.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, apricot, sugar, lemon):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, apricot, sugar, lemon. 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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