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Jersey Pudding

A baked peach pudding made with buttered bread and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Jersey Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dish

  1. Butter a deep pudding dish.

  2. Line the bottom with buttered bread slices.

Assemble

  1. Layer peaches and sugar alternately until the dish is nearly full.

  2. Fit a cover of buttered bread on top.

  3. Place a plate over it and set it in the oven.

Bake and serve

  1. When the juice begins to boil, remove the plate.

  2. Bake until the peaches are perfectly tender.

  3. Let it cool before serving.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Bread + peachtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Soften into tender fruit and release juice that soaks into the bread.
Bread
Forms the structure of the pudding, soaking up peach juice as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the peaches and helps draw out their juice.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown lightly while it bakes.

The step that matters

Removing the plate when the juice begins to boil. Timing this step matters because the weighted plate presses the layers together while the fruit releases juice. Removing it at the boil lets the top bread dry and brown rather than staying soggy.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, sugar. 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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