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Marlborough Pudding

A baked apple and sponge cake pudding with butter, sugar, eggs, and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Marlborough Pudding

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 ↓

Marlborough Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

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

  2. Pare, core, and quarter the apples.

  3. Stew them in a small amount of water until soft but not broken.

  4. Drain and mash the apples until smooth and let them cool.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the sugar, sponge cake, nutmeg, and lemon zest and juice alternately to the cooled apples.

  2. Whisk the eggs until thick and stir them in gradually.

  3. Mix everything well together and pour into a buttered dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 45 minutes.

  2. Once done, turn out of the dish, sift sugar over it if desired, and decorate with thin slices of citron.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main body and moisture of the pudding once mashed smooth.
Eggs
Thicken and set the mixture, giving it structure as it bakes.
Sponge cake
Adds bulk and soaks up the apple juices to hold the pudding together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown on the surface.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweet apples.

The step that matters

Whisk the eggs until thick and stir them in gradually. Whisking traps air that gives lift and lightness. Adding the eggs slowly and mixing well keeps the batter smooth and stops the whisked foam from deflating or curdling.

Swap the apple

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

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

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