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Dessert

Apple Custard Pudding

A baked apple custard made with apples, sugar, butter, lemon, flour, breadcrumbs, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Custard Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the apple base

  1. Combine apples and water in a pot.

  2. Stew until soft.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Stir in sugar, butter, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix flour with bread crumbs.

  2. Stir into apple mixture.

  3. Gently fold in beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  6. Serve with hard 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 main body and soft, tender texture of the pudding.
Egg whites
Beaten into the mixture to lighten it and help it rise and set in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding a soft, set structure.
Flour
Thickens the apple mixture so it holds together when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender crumb and smooth flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the lemon and apples.

The step that matters

Gently fold in beaten egg whites. Folding rather than stirring keeps the air in the beaten whites. Deflating them makes the pudding dense instead of light and risen.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, lemon, flour, bread, 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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