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Dessert

Apricot Pudding

A baked apricot pudding made with butter, lemon zest, cinnamon, apricot yellow, sugar, eggs, flour, apricots, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Apricot Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix ½ pound butter, lemon zest, ground cinnamon, and apricot yellow in a bowl for 10 minutes.

  2. Add ½ pound sugar and mix for 5 minutes.

  3. Gradually add ½ pound eggs and ½ pound flour, mixing one egg and a tablespoon of flour at a time until combined.

  4. Fold in sliced apricots and baking powder.

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a mold with warm butter and coat with browned bread crumbs.

  2. Fill the mold three‑quarters full with the mixture.

  3. Insert a buttered paper band with a peeled potato or carrot to prevent leakage.

  4. Wrap a buttered paper band around the outside of the mold, extending 3 inches above it.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for just over 1 hour.

  2. Turn out onto a pastry rack with a dish underneath.

  3. Pour cherry syrup over the pudding and serve on a hot dish, covered with yellow apricot sauce.

  4. Garnish with shredded almonds and pistachio nuts.

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

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

  3. Cinnamon + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to form the structure and richness of the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together after baking.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps tenderise the batter when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the pudding rises and becomes lighter.
Preserved apricots
Add fruitiness, moisture, and flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Gradually add the eggs and flour. Adding eggs slowly, one at a time with a little flour, keeps the batter emulsified. Adding them all at once can cause curdling, which may leave a coarse, uneven texture after baking.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, cinnamon, sugar, egg, flour, bread. 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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