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Dessert

Fruited Apple Pudding

A baked apple pudding with raisins, citron, lemon peel, sugar, and a buttered breadcrumb topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fruited 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. Peel the apples.

  2. Core enough apples to fill a deep baking dish.

  3. Pit the apples snugly.

  4. Fill the holes with raisins, shredded citron, and lemon peel.

  5. Dredge with sugar.

  6. Pour ½ cup of hot water over them.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until perfectly tender.

  2. Remove from the oven.

  3. Sprinkle lightly with bread crumbs.

  4. Dust with sugar.

  5. Dot with butter.

  6. Bake for an additional 10 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix 1 tablespoon of flour and ⅓ cup of sugar.

  2. Pour in 1 cup of boiling water.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Slowly pour over 1 beaten egg while stirring constantly.

  6. Flavor with lemon juice or extract.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with the pudding.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples
Form the tender base of the pudding and provide a tart flavor that balances the sugar.
Seedless raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness inside the apple cavities.
Bread crumbs
Sprinkled on top, they absorb juices and help form a light topping.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it gently cooks with the hot liquid, adding richness.
Flour
Its starch thickens the hot water mixture, giving the sauce body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples and topping brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Pour the hot liquid slowly into the beaten egg. Adding hot liquid gradually while stirring constantly tempers the egg, so it warms evenly and thickens smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, raisin, sugar, bread, flour, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, raisin, sugar, bread, flour, 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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