Skip to main content
Dessert

Baked Apple Pudding

A baked dessert of mashed apples, roll crumbs, butter, eggs, lemon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and quarter the apples.

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

  3. Drain and mash the apples until smooth.

Make the filling

  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.

Bake

  1. Bake until set and golden.

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
Cook down to a soft, smooth base that gives the pudding its body and fruity flavour.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a tender, sliceable texture when baked.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the pudding rise and hold its structure as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a moist, tender crumb to the pudding.
Roll crumbs
Soak up moisture and give the pudding body so it holds together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the apples and sugar.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Egg proteins set with heat, so the pudding must bake long enough to firm up in the centre. Pulling it too early leaves a runny middle, while overbaking can make the eggs curdle and turn dry or rubbery.

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.

You might also like