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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A baked dessert of apples, raisins, currants, nuts, and cinnamon in a cracker base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Apple Pudding

Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roll the crackers very fine and mix with cinnamon, sugar, and lemon juice. Spread the mixture in the bottom of a buttered pudding dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine the apple cubes, sugar, cinnamon, raisins, currants, and nuts. Mix well and pour over the cracker layer, filling the dish almost to the top.

  2. Cover the mixture with cracker crumbs and bake for 20 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  2. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  4. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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 of the filling and moisture as they soften and release juice while baking.
Crackers
Form the base layer that soaks up juices and softens into a soft, pudding-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples and crackers brown lightly as they bake.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.
Currants
Add small bursts of chewy texture and tartness throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Filling the dish almost to the top. Apples release juice and the crackers soften as they bake, so the filling expands and can bubble over if the dish is overfilled. Leaving some room keeps the pudding contained and cooking evenly.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, sugar, lemon, apple, raisin, currant, butter):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar, lemon, apple, raisin, currant, 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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