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Dessert

Boston Apple Pudding

A baked pudding of stewed apples, sugar, water, cinnamon, lemon juice, cream, eggs, and butter, lined with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Boston 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 the apples

  1. Stew the apples with sugar, water, and cinnamon until soft.

  2. Mash the mixture through a sieve.

Make the pudding

  1. Add lemon juice, hot cream, egg yolks, egg white, and melted butter to the apple mixture.

  2. Line a pudding dish with rich pastry and pour in the mixture.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until firm, or bake without pastry until firm.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream, hot or cold.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Sour apples
Provide the main bulk and tart flavour that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the stewed apples become soft and smooth.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as it bakes, giving the pudding a set, custard-like texture.
Egg white
Adds structure and helps the pudding set firm when baked.
Hot cream
Adds richness and moisture, producing a softer, silkier texture.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Bake until firm. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the pudding loose, while overbaking makes it grainy and watery as the custard curdles and weeps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, cream, egg, butter. 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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