Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
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 the apples
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Fill a medium-sized pudding dish two-thirds full with sliced apples and cover closely.
Bake the apples until tender.
Make the topping and bake
In a bowl, beat together the egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, and flour.
Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.
Pour the mixture over the baked apples and bake for an additional 15 minutes.
Serve warm with cream.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Sliced apples
- Form the soft fruit base that cooks down into the pudding's moist filling.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the custard and help it set into a tender, creamy layer.
- Egg whites
- Whipped and folded in, they lighten the topping and help it rise and puff.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the topping brown lightly in the oven.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the apples and sugar.
The step that matters
Folding in the beaten egg whites. Gentle folding keeps the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, so the topping bakes denser and rises less.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, lemon, flour, cream):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Raspberryfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, flour, cream. 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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