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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A baked apple pudding with a cake-like batter, cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter, served with cream or sauce.

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 nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and slice the apples.

  2. Cook the sliced apples in the oven with very little water until soft.

  3. Sweeten the cooked apples while they are hot.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg, sugar, butter, milk, and enough flour to create a cake-batter consistency.

  2. Add the baking powder to the batter.

  3. Flavor the batter as desired.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer sliced apples.

  2. Sprinkle the apples with cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar.

  3. Add a layer of bread crumbs and pieces of butter.

  4. Add another layer of apples.

  5. Top with bread crumbs.

  6. Bake until golden.

  7. Serve with cream or 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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Form the fruit base, softening and releasing moisture into the pudding.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set into a firm, sliceable custard-like texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that turns the batter into a cake-like crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and become lighter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness, and a golden browning on top.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the flour hydrates into a smooth batter.

The step that matters

Mixing the batter to cake-batter consistency. Flour must be added until the batter is thick enough to hold its shape around the apples. Too thin and it will sink and run together; too much flour makes it dense and dry, since flour absorbs liquid and forms gluten as it is mixed.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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