Skip to main content
Dessert

Marlborough Pudding

A baked apple pudding with cream, lemon, eggs, sugar, and potato paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓
Marlborough Pudding

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Marlborough 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 filling

  1. Stew the apples.

  2. Strain the apples.

  3. Add the cream, lemon rind, lemon juice, eggs, and sugar to the apples.

Bake

  1. Line a deep baking dish with potato paste.

  2. Bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + potatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  3. Apple + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  5. Cream + potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk and fruity base of the filling once stewed and strained.
Eggs
Set the creamy filling as it bakes, giving it structure and body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness of the custard.
Potato paste
Forms the pastry-like crust that holds the filling in the baking dish.

The step that matters

Straining the stewed apples. If the apples are not strained well, excess liquid and lumps will thin the filling and stop it from setting smoothly when baked with the eggs.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, lemon, egg, sugar, potato. 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.

You might also like