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Dessert

A Spiced Apple-pudding

A baked dessert made with bread crumbs, apples, raisins, spices, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

A Spiced Apple-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cook the bread crumbs in 1 pint of milk for a few minutes.

  2. Add the chopped apples, sugar, raisins, citron, brandy, cinnamon, cloves, and mace.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites just before baking.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with any sweet 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk to form the soft body of the pudding.
Eggs
Beaten whites folded in to lighten the pudding and help it rise while baking.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness, and soften into the pudding as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Cinnamon
Provides the warm, spiced aroma that defines the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites just before baking. Beaten egg whites trap air that gives lift. If they are folded in too early or stirred vigorously, they deflate and the pudding bakes up denser.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, apple, sugar, raisin, brandy, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, apple, sugar, raisin, brandy, cinnamon, clove. 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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