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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A baked apple dessert with lemon, sugar, butter, cream, eggs, and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Apple Pudding

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the cream, then stir in the eggs, sugar, and lemon peel.

  3. Heat the mixture until hot, then pour it into a puff pastry crust.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the reserved egg whites to stiff peaks with sugar, then fold in the lemon juice.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pudding and brown it briefly in the oven.

  3. Serve cold.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and add richness, while the whites whipped into meringue give lightness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, when whipped with egg whites, stabilises the meringue.
Coddled apples
Provide the main fruit body and moisture of the pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites under-whipped or greasy will not hold their shape, so the meringue can weep or sink. Whites must be free of yolk and fat, and sugar helps stabilise the foam.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, butter, cream, 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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