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Dessert

Apple Meringue Pudding

A baked apple sauce and breadcrumb pudding topped with meringue, served cold with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Apple Meringue 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.

Make the pudding base

  1. Run the apple sauce through a colander and beat with an egg whisk until light and creamy.

  2. Mix the bread crumbs, apple sauce, and melted butter together.

  3. Add the mace, cinnamon, lemon juice, and beaten egg yolks, then beat hard for 1 minute.

Bake

  1. Turn the mixture into a buttered pudding dish and bake covered at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes, then remove from the oven.

Finish and serve

  1. Spread with meringue made from the stiffened egg whites.

  2. Serve ice-cold with cream.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Apple + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Apple sauce
Provides the main moisture and bulk, giving the pudding a soft, spoonable body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the pudding structure as it bakes.
Eggs
Yolks set the pudding when baked, and stiffened whites form the light meringue topping.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apple flavour.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a sharp, winey note to the apple flavour.

The step that matters

Stiffening the egg whites for the meringue. Whites must be beaten until they hold stiff peaks, because well-formed foam traps air and holds its shape on top of the pudding. Under-beaten whites collapse or weep and make the topping flat and wet.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sauce, bread, egg, sherry, butter, lemon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sauce, bread, egg, sherry, butter, 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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