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Apple Pudding

A baked apple custard made with apples, biscuits, nutmeg, cream, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Apple Pudding

Why it works: Biscuit and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 368 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Scald the apples and bruise them through a sieve.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the apple puree with biscuits, nutmeg, cream, and sweeten to taste.

  2. Add 10 eggs and half the egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake for 30 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. Biscuit + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Apple + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Codling apples
Provide the bulk and the apple flavour of the pudding.
Biscuits
Absorb liquid and thicken the mixture so it holds its body.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, silkier texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding into a custard-like structure.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Eggs set when heated and give the pudding its structure. Whisking them in evenly before baking keeps the custard smooth and prevents pockets of cooked egg.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, nutmeg, cream, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, nutmeg, cream, egg. 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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