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Dessert

Jersey Pudding

A baked peach pudding made with buttered bread, peaches, 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a deep pudding dish.

  3. Line the bottom with thin slices of buttered bread.

  4. Pare peaches and slice them.

Assemble

  1. Layer peaches, sugar, and bread alternately until nearly full.

  2. Cover the top with a layer of buttered bread.

  3. Place a plate over the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until the juice begins to boil.

  2. Remove the plate.

  3. Continue baking until the peaches are tender.

  4. 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
Supply the fruit filling, softening and releasing juice that moistens the bread as it bakes.
Bread
Forms the layered structure and soaks up the peach juice, turning soft and custard-like.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps it caramelise slightly as the juices cook down.
Butter
Greases the dish and enriches the buttered bread, promoting gentle browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Covering with the plate before baking. The plate keeps the top layer pressed down so the bread stays in contact with the juices. Removing it later lets the top brown while the peaches finish cooking.

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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