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Dessert

A Custard Apple Pudding

A custard apple pudding made with apples, lemon, sugar, butter, egg yolks, baked and finished with icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

A Custard Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple base

  1. Pare and quarter the apples.

  2. Place the apples in a saucepan with the lemon rind and water.

  3. Add sugar and simmer, stirring continuously until reduced to jam.

  4. Remove the lemon peel.

  5. Stir in butter and lemon juice.

  6. Once cool, add the egg yolks and mix well.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a buttered mold for 30 minutes.

  2. Turn out the pudding.

  3. Brush with egg white.

  4. Cover with sifted sugar.

  5. Return to the oven for 5 minutes to harden the icing.

  6. Serve hot or cold.

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. Sugar + buttertop 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 into a jam-like base that gives the pudding its body and fruity flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple base and, as a sifted topping, forms a crisp glaze.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender texture to the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help it set when baked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apple flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks once the apple mixture has cooled. Egg yolks begin to set with heat, so adding them to a very hot mixture can scramble them. Letting it cool first keeps the base smooth and evenly textured before baking.

Swap the apple

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

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

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