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Harvest Noodle Pudding, Fruit Kugel

"An old-time noodle custard dessert recipe with a bit of a modern twist. Layered egg noodles with apples, pears and dried cranberries baked in sweet custard. It has a warm grandmotherly taste and feeling to it. Simple yet rich in flavor with little effort in preparation sure to please many in the autumn. It takes advantage of apples and pears harvested in the fall along with tangy sweet dried cranberries."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 648 recipes mention both. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

8 servings
Prep15 min
Cook45 min

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.

  2. Bring a pan of boiling water to a boil, add the egg noodles, and cook about 6 minutes until just tender. Drain well.

  3. Toss the chopped apple and pear with the lemon juice in a bowl.

  4. In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, applesauce, white sugar, light brown sugar, vanilla extract, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg until smooth.

  5. Stir the drained noodles, melted butter, apple and pear mixture, and dried cranberries together. Pour in the egg mixture and stir to combine.

  6. Spread the mixture evenly in the prepared dish and bake 40 to 45 minutes, until the top is golden and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. The center should reach 160°F (71°C) because it contains raw eggs.

  7. Let the kugel cool for 10 minutes, then cut into 8 squares and serve warm.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Apple + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together648 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Pear + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together19,175 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together35,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla share little aroma chemistry, yet 35,031 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, apple, pear, milk, sugar, vanilla):

  1. Peachbetter flavor fit
  2. Strawberrybetter flavor fit
  3. Figbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, apple, pear, milk, sugar, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).