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Dessert

Puff Pudding

A baked apple puff pudding made with sour cream batter, stewed apples, and a sweet egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Puff Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sour cream, baking soda, and salt, then stir in flour until the mixture is stiff.

  3. Spread the batter in a 2-quart pudding pan and bake until browned.

Add the apples and top

  1. In another bowl, combine stewed apples, butter, sugar, and egg yolk.

  2. Pour the apple mixture into the pudding pan and return to the oven.

  3. Beat the egg white with 2 tablespoons of sugar until stiff.

  4. Spread the egg white mixture on top and bake until browned again.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and reacts with baking soda to help the batter rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter holds a stiff shape while baking.
Stewed apples
Supply moisture, sweetness and fruit flavor beneath the baked top.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it forms a light topping that browns in the oven.
Egg yolk
Enriches the apple mixture and helps bind it to give a tender texture.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white until stiff. Egg white whipped to stiff peaks traps air and sets when heated, giving the topping its light, airy texture. Underwhipped whites stay loose and sink into the apples.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, butter, sugar, 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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