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Dessert

Sliced Apple Pudding

A baked pudding made with eggs, milk, flour, butter, and sliced apples or peaches.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sliced Apple 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 the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Peel and slice the apples or peaches thinly.

  4. Combine the eggs and milk with enough flour to make a thick batter.

  5. Stir in the melted butter and the sliced fruit.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a deep baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Serve warm with sugar, butter, and a sprinkle of nutmeg.

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

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Set the pudding and give it structure as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds the fruit and sets firmly.
Rich milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the custard-like batter set.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Apples or peaches
Add fruit moisture, sweetness, and flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs until very light. Beaten eggs trap air that helps the pudding rise and lighten. Under-beaten eggs leave a denser result, and the batter then needs to be mixed well so the flour and milk combine without lumps.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, flour, butter, sugar, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, butter, sugar, nutmeg. 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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