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Dessert

Dutch Pudding

A baked apple pudding made with flour, butter, sugar, and apples, baked until soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Dutch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Reserve 2 tablespoons of sugar and put the apples, reserved sugar, and hot water into a baking dish.

  2. Add nutmeg and lemon juice to the apples.

  3. Bake until the apples are partly soft.

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, baking powder, and salt together.

  2. Beat the eggs well and add them to the milk.

  3. Stir the egg-milk mixture into the flour until smooth.

  4. Melt the butter and add it to the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the butter mixture over the apples.

  2. Return to the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with lemon 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.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Builds the pudding's structure as its starch sets during baking.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set around the apples.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the batter rises and lightens.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and batter and helps browning on the surface.
Apples
Provide moisture and a tart fruit base that softens under the batter.

The step that matters

Stir the egg-milk mixture into the flour until just smooth. Flour proteins form gluten when stirred, and overmixing makes the batter tough and dense. Stop once the batter is smooth so the pudding stays light and tender.

Swap the apple

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

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

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