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Dessert

Apple Pudding, Family Style

A baked apple pudding with bread crumbs, currants, butter, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Pudding, Family Style

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel and dice the apples.

  2. Mix apples with sugar, cinnamon, and lemon rind.

  3. Combine bread crumbs and currants with the apple mixture.

  4. Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the egg yolks.

  5. Stir in the milk and mix with the crumbs and apples.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a pudding dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  2. Serve with wine or brandy sauce.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provide moisture and tart fruit flavor that contrasts with the sweet, rich batter.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb the milk and butter to set a soft structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender texture to the creamed base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help bind it as the pudding sets in the oven.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add lightness and help the pudding rise and set airy.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps brown the surface as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring them in hard deflates the foam, so the pudding bakes denser and less light.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, bread, butter, egg. 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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