Name: Apple Pudding
Ingredients: 2 to 3 quarts of apples, peeled and sliced thin; ½ cup cold water; 1 tender crust; Butter for greasing

Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

2 to 3 quarts of apples, peeled and sliced thin
½ cup cold water
1 tender crust
Butter for greasing

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Select two deep earthen dishes of the same size that hold 2 to 3 quarts.
Fill one dish with the sliced apples and add cold water.
Cover the apples with the tender crust.

Bake and serve

Butter the empty dish and turn it over the one with the pudding.
Place both dishes in a 400°F (200°C) oven and bake for about 30 minutes.
Serve immediately without removing the upper dish until ready to eat.

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.

Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide the fruit filling that softens and becomes tender as it bakes.
Tender crust: Covers the apples and traps steam so the fruit cooks in its own moisture.
Cold water: Adds a little moisture to the apples during baking.

“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.