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Dessert

Appledore Pudding

A fruit pudding made with stale cake, berries or currants, wine, and frosted with beaten egg whites and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,323 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Appledore 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. Line a pudding dish with stale cake.

  2. Fill the dish with fresh berries or currants, leaving 3 inches from the top.

  3. Sprinkle ½ cup sugar over the berries or 1 cup over the currants to allow them to swell.

Bake and finish

  1. Cover the filling with more cake and wet it with 1 cup of wine.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Frost with 2 beaten egg whites and 1 cup sugar until stiff and brown.

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. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Stale cake
Forms a sturdy lining and top that soaks up wine and juices without falling apart.
Fresh berries or currants
Provide the fruit filling, releasing juice and flavour as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice so the berries swell and soften.
Wine
Moistens the cake layers and adds acidity and aroma to the fruit.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar, they form a stiff meringue that sets and browns on top.

The step that matters

Frost with beaten egg whites and sugar until stiff and brown. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff so the sugar dissolves into a stable foam. Underbeaten whites collapse, while the sugar and heat drive browning on the surface.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, 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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