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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A baked dessert made with bread crumbs, apples, raisins, eggs, milk, sugar, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Apple Pudding

Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin 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 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. Scald the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs; beat until light.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, sugar, chopped apples, raisins, spices, and lemon juice.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish, cover, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Uncover and drain before serving hot 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.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 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. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Yolks bind the batter and whites, folded in, lighten it as it sets.
Fine bread crumbs
Soak up the scalded milk to form the soft body of the pudding.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and keeps the pudding tender as it bakes.
Apples
Add moisture and a mild tart sweetness that stays through baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly at the surface.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air that helps the pudding rise and set light. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a denser result.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, apple, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, brandy, raisin):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, apple, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, brandy, raisin. 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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