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Dessert

Apple-puff Pudding

A baked pudding made with a batter of flour, milk, eggs, and diced apples, topped with butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple-puff 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a basin, combine the flour and salt.

  2. Gradually stir in the milk until smooth.

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a pie dish and pour in the batter.

  2. Add the diced apples to the batter.

  3. Dot the top with small pieces of butter.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Once done, sprinkle sugar over the top and serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Eggs
Set the batter into a custard-like structure while adding richness and body.
All-purpose flour
Gives the batter its structure, thickening as it bakes around the fruit.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and forms the liquid base that bakes into a tender custard.
Apples
Add moisture and fruity sweetness that softens and bakes into the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns on the surface as it bakes.

The step that matters

Pour the batter and bake at 350°F for 45 minutes. Mixing the batter until smooth before baking avoids lumps of flour, and baking until set lets the eggs and flour firm into a custard rather than a runny center.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, butter, sugar. 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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