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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A baked apple dessert with raisins, nuts, and a custard-like filling made from eggs, butter, and soaked bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Pare and core the apples.

  3. Scrape out some of the inside from each apple.

  4. Mix the scraped apple with sugar, cinnamon, lemon peel, raisins, and nuts.

  5. Fill the cavities of the apples with the mixture.

  6. Place the filled apples in a well-buttered dish.

  7. Pour water, Sherry wine, and additional sugar over the apples.

  8. Bake until partly tender, basting frequently.

Make the topping

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs, soaked bread, lemon juice, and grated rind.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour this mixture over the apples.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 45 minutes.

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. Apple + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the custard-like topping, while whipped whites lighten it and help it set.
Apples
Provide the main body and fruit flavour, softening as they bake in the dish.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add richness and a tender texture to the topping.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it adds moisture and body to the topping mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and topping and helps the topping brown as it bakes.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the apple filling.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped stiff and folded in gently. Overmixing deflates the foam, so the topping bakes less light and airy.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, raisin, sherry, wine. 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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