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Dessert

Apple Pudding

Apple pudding is a baked dish of apples in a batter, served with a lemon butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Apple Pudding

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 ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Place the whole apples in a deep dish.

  2. In a bowl, mix 2 eggs, 1 pint of milk, and 3 tablespoons of flour to make a batter. Pour the batter over the apples and bake until set.

Make the lemon sauce

  1. For the lemon sauce, cream together ½ cup of butter and ¾ cup of sugar. Beat in 1 egg, the lemon juice, and nutmeg until light and fluffy. Gradually add ½ cup of boiling water while stirring constantly.

  2. Place the sauce in a tin pail and set it in the uncovered top of a boiling teakettle until very hot, but not boiling.

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.

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.

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

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

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

Apples
Soften during baking and give the pudding its fruit base and body.
Eggs
Set the batter into a custard-like structure as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the batter, adding moisture and richness.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it sets around the apples instead of running off.
Butter
Adds richness and, creamed with sugar, a light, smooth sauce texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, creamed with butter, helps it become light and fluffy.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce gently. The sauce is heated only until very hot, not boiling, because high heat can curdle the egg in it and cause it to separate or turn grainy.

Swap the apple

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

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

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