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Dessert

Baked Apple Padding

A baked apple dessert with lemon, roll crumbs, butter, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Apple Padding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and quarter the apples.

  2. Boil the apples with the lemon rind in just enough water to cover them until tender.

  3. Drain and beat the apples until fine.

Make and bake the pudding

  1. Mix in the roll crumbs, melted butter, egg yolks, egg whites, lemon juice, and sugar.

  2. Pour the mixture into a dish lined with pastry.

  3. Cover with pastry and bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until set.

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 + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main bulk and moisture, cooking down into a soft, smooth base.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the pudding set into a tender, custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness as they coagulate during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Roll crumbs
Soak up liquid and give the pudding body and a soft structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins set at moderate heat, and overbaking makes them tight and curdled, leaving the pudding dry and grainy. Stop when the centre just firms and no longer looks liquid.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, butter, egg, sugar. 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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