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Dessert

Apple Cracker Pudding

A baked apple pudding with custard of eggs, sugar, lemon peel, and crushed crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Apple Cracker 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 the apples

  1. Stew the apples with enough sugar to sweeten, adding raisins and cinnamon until tender. Set aside to cool.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and 1 cup of sugar until thick like batter.

  2. Stir in the grated lemon peel and crushed crackers.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a pudding dish, layer in the stewed apples, then pour the custard mixture on top.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set. Serve cold with whipped cream.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the fruit base and moisture that softens during stewing and sits under the custard.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a tender, sliceable texture when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness and airy rise to the custard.
Crackers
Crushed crumbs add body and starch to the custard, giving it a light, cakey structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and custard and helps the yolks thicken when beaten.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that gives the pudding its lift. Stirring or deflating them vigorously knocks out air, leaving a denser, flatter result.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, raisin, cinnamon, egg, butter, cream. 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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