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Dessert

Dutch Apple Pudding

A baked apple pudding with a lemon sauce, made from flour, butter, eggs, apples, sugar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Dutch Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  4. Beat the egg and mix it with cold water, then stir into the flour mixture.

  5. Spread the dough thinly in well-buttered shallow pans.

Bake the pudding

  1. Arrange the quartered apples on top of the dough and sprinkle with sugar and nutmeg.

  2. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until golden brown.

Make the lemon sauce and serve

  1. For the lemon sauce, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Beat in the egg, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  3. Add nutmeg and boiling water, stirring constantly over boiling water until thickened.

  4. Serve the pudding warm with lemon 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the pudding together.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderise the dough and add richness.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness to the lemon sauce.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the dough rises and becomes light.
Sour apples
Add moisture and a tart flavour that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the lemon sauce over boiling water until thickened. The sauce must be stirred constantly so the egg and butter mixture thickens smoothly without lumps or curdling from the heat.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, butter, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, sauce. 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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