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Dessert

Baked Apple Pudding

A baked pudding of sliced apples, suet crust, butter, lemon juice and rind, sweetened with 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 Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the basin

  1. Butter a pudding basin and sprinkle it thickly with moist sugar.

  2. Cover the basin with a suet crust.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill it with slices of apple and sugar to taste.

  2. Add a pinch of salt and the juice and rind of one lemon.

  3. Cover the top with crust and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for two hours.

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. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Suet crust
Forms a rich, sturdy case that holds the filling while it steams and bakes.
Slices of apple
Provide the bulk of the filling, softening as they cook and releasing moisture.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the filling and caramelises against the basin for a sticky, browned surface.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apple and balances the sugar.
Lemon rind
Contributes fragrant citrus oils that add aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Cover the top with crust and bake. A sealed top traps steam and juices so the apple cooks in its own liquid and the pudding stays moist. The edges must be pressed firmly closed, or the crust can open and leak during the long bake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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