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Dessert

Apple Pudding

Apple pudding is a baked apple dish with a butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour batter and a butter-sugar-egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Apple Pudding

Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare and bake

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

  2. Butter a baking dish and fill it with sliced apples.

  3. In a bowl, mix together the butter, sugar, egg, sweet milk, flour, and baking powder to create a batter.

  4. Pour the batter over the apples in the baking dish.

  5. Bake until brown, about 30-40 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Just before serving, stir in enough boiling water to achieve a thick cream consistency.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Butter + flourtop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that bakes around the apples.
Eggs
Bind the batter and sauce and help give the sauce a rich, thickened body.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in both the batter and the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the sauce cream into a smooth base.
Sliced apples
Provide moisture and tartness that contrast with the sweet batter.

The step that matters

Just before serving, stir in enough boiling water to achieve a thick cream consistency.. Adding the boiling water too early or in too large an amount can thin the sauce too much. Stirring in only enough water, just before serving, keeps the sauce thick and creamy.

Swap the apple

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

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

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