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Dessert

Bared Apple Pudding

A baked apple pudding with butter, sugar, wine, rosewater, spices, eggs, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Bared 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.

Make the filling

  1. Stew the apples until very dry.

  2. Let the apples cool slightly, then stir in the butter.

  3. Add sugar, wine, rosewater, cinnamon, nutmeg, and mix well.

  4. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  5. Fold in the fine bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

  2. Serve with sauce, or sugar and 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. 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Apples
Provide the bulk and fruity flavor, and their moisture softens into the pudding once stewed dry.
Eggs
Set the pudding as they cook, giving it structure and a custard-like body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the pudding its body as it bakes.

The step that matters

Stew the apples until very dry. Apples hold a lot of water, and excess moisture would keep the pudding wet and loose after baking. Cooking them down concentrates their flavor and leaves a thick base that sets properly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, wine, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, bread. 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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