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Dessert

New England Apple Pudding

A baked apple pudding made with stewed apples, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon, and optional sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

New England Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple base

  1. Stew the tart apples and strain through a colander.

  2. Take 1 quart of the strained apples and, while hot, stir in ½ cup of butter and 2 cups of sugar.

  3. Add 4-5 well-beaten eggs, reserving the whites for the top.

  4. Flavor with the juice of 1 lemon and bake in deep plates.

Finish

  1. If desired, top with a meringue 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples
Provide the main bulk and tart flavor that balances the sugar.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the apple base.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps give it a soft, set texture.
Eggs
Bind the apple mixture so it sets when baked.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that lifts the sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the warm apple mixture. Eggs can scramble if added to a very hot mixture too quickly. Stirring them in gradually, after the apples have cooled slightly, lets them blend smoothly and set evenly in the oven.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

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