Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. 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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make and bake
In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the salt, sugar, water, flour, and baking powder.
Fill a pudding pan two-thirds full with the chopped sour apples.
Pour the batter over the apples.
Bake for 30 minutes.
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 + 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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Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + appletop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,140 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
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and give the pudding its set, airy structure as they cook.
- Flour
- Forms the body of the batter, giving the pudding its structure as it sets.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the oven, helping the pudding rise and become light.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
- Sour apples
- Provide tartness and moisture that balance the sweet, starchy batter.
The step that matters
Pouring the batter over the apples. Batter should be poured gently so the apples stay evenly distributed and the batter settles around them. Fruit that sinks or floats unevenly bakes unevenly, and a thin batter can leak beneath the fruit.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour. 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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