Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Apple Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Poach the apples
Wash and wipe the apples, then core and pare them evenly.
Boil the apples gently in enough water to reach the tops, adding 1 teaspoon of sugar for each apple and a square inch of lemon peel.
Cook until the apples are soft but not broken.
Lift the apples into a glass dish when done.
Finish and serve
Reduce the cooking water by half.
Fill the holes in the apples with jelly.
Pour the cooled syrup over the apples.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
- Apples
- Form the body of the pudding, softening while keeping their shape when cooked gently.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the poaching liquid and syrup, balancing the tartness of the apples.
- Jelly
- Adds sweetness and bright flavor, and fills the cored centers of the apples.
The step that matters
Cook until the apples are soft but not broken. Gentle simmering softens the apple flesh by breaking down its cell walls while the skin and structure hold. Boiling hard or cooking too long makes the apples collapse and lose their shape.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar):
- Pearfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Apricotfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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