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Dessert

Apple Cake Pudding

A pudding made with boiled apples, potatoes, eggs, and sugar, baked in a buttered mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apple Cake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Boil the apples with the lemon rind and water until they become a pulp.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Crush the boiled potatoes and mix them in gradually.

  4. Whisk the eggs and add them to the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and boil quickly for 1.5 hours.

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

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

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  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. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Baking apples
Break down into a pulp that gives the pudding its moisture, body and fruity flavor.
Potatoes
Their starch thickens the mixture and gives the pudding a soft, dense texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as they cook, holding the pudding together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding in the buttered mold for 1.5 hours. Sustained heat is needed for the eggs and potato starch to set the mixture into a firm pudding. The butter keeps the mold from sticking so the pudding can be turned out whole.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, lemon, sugar, egg, butter. 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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