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Dessert

Baked Apple Pudding

A baked dessert of apples with sugar, cinnamon, butter, and a crust of flour, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Baked Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. Fill a 3-quart dish with the apples, sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon, butter, and water; cover and bake for 30 minutes.

Add the crust and bake

  1. Roll out a piece of dough into a strip about 2 inches wide to fit around the dish.

  2. Roll out the remaining dough to cover the dish.

  3. Remove the dish from the oven, place the dough strip between the apples and the dish, and add the top crust.

  4. Return to the oven and bake for another hour.

  5. Serve with a cream 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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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 the bulk of the filling and release juices that form the sauce as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples soften and caramelise slightly as they bake.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust, which sets and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to both the filling and the crust, aiding browning and tenderness.

The step that matters

Adding the crust strip between the apples and the dish. The dish is removed from the oven and the strip is placed against hot fruit and dish walls, so the pastry must be fitted quickly and evenly to bake through and seal properly during the final hour.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, butter, flour. 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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