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Dessert

A Nice Apple-pudding

A baked apple and bread pudding topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Nice 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a deep baking dish.

Assemble and bake the pudding

  1. Layer thin slices of bread and stewed apples alternately in the dish.

  2. In a bowl, mix milk, sugar, and beaten egg yolks; pour over the layered bread and apples.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until set.

Top with meringue and brown

  1. In another bowl, beat egg whites to stiff peaks; gradually add sugar and flavor with lemon or nutmeg.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pudding and return to the oven to brown.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs yolks
Thicken the custard so the pudding sets softly when baked.
Egg whites
Whip into stiff peaks to form the airy, browned meringue topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and sets in the oven.
Bread
Soaks up the custard and forms the soft body of the pudding.
Stewed apples
Add fruit moisture and flavor between the bread layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, added to the whites, stabilizes the meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites must be whipped until firm and the sugar added gradually so the meringue holds its volume and does not weep or collapse when it browns in the oven. Any trace of fat or yolk in the bowl can stop the whites from whipping properly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, apple, milk, egg, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, apple, milk, egg, sugar. 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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