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Dessert

Frangipan and Apple Pudding

A baked pudding of frangipane, apples, and apricot jam, baked in a souffle dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Frangipan and Apple Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk and cream with the lemon peel, cinnamon, and sugar.

  2. Thicken the mixture with arrowroot, then remove the peel and cinnamon.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks and let the mixture cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a souffle dish and layer sliced apples at the bottom.

  2. Cover the apples with apricot jam, then alternate layers of frangipane, apples, and jam until the dish is full.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for one hour.

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. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cinnamon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Set the custard as it bakes and add richness and a smooth texture.
Arrowroot
Thickens the hot milk and cream into a smooth custard without making it cloudy.
Milk and cream
Form the liquid base of the custard, giving body and a rich mouthfeel.
Apples
Add tart fruit flavor and moisture between the custard layers.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor between the layers.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with arrowroot. Arrowroot must be fully thickened over heat before the egg yolks go in. Under-thickened custard stays runny, and boiling after the yolks are added can curdle them and spoil the smooth texture.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, lemon, cinnamon, sugar, egg, butter):

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, lemon, cinnamon, sugar, egg, butter. 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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