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Dessert

Baked Apple Pudding

A baked dessert made with stewed apples, butter, eggs, sugar, lemon, and soft crackers layered in a pudding dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked 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. Stew and strain the apples.

  2. Pound the soft crackers.

  3. Butter a good-sized pudding dish.

Make and layer

  1. While hot, add the butter, beaten eggs, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon peel; mix well.

  2. Layer some cracker crumbs, then a layer of the apple mixture, and repeat until all ingredients are used.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main body and moisture of the pudding once stewed and strained.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the filling.
Eggs
Bind the apple mixture so it sets into a soft, cohesive pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the apples and lemon.
Lemon
Adds brightness and acidity along with aromatic peel oils.
Soft crackers
Crumbs soak up apple moisture and add structure between the layers.

The step that matters

Mixing the eggs into the hot apples. Beaten eggs are added while the apple mixture is still hot, and the heat begins to set them gently. Mixing well spreads the eggs, butter and sugar evenly so the filling bakes smooth rather than streaky or curdled.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, lemon. 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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