Name: Apple Pudding, Baked
Ingredients: 12 large apples; 4 Naples biscuits; rind of 1 lemon; juice of 1 lemon; 4 eggs; 2 ounces butter; sugar to taste; thin puff-paste

Why it works: Biscuit and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 697 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Apple Pudding, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the apples until soft.

Make the filling

Grate in the Naples biscuits and lemon rind, squeezing in the lemon juice.
Add the eggs and butter, then sweeten to taste.

Bake

Line a dish with thin puff-paste and pour the mixture in.
Bake 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.

Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together697 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,009 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

Apples: Provide the bulk of the filling and its soft, moist body.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set firm when baked.
Butter: Adds richness and a tender texture to the filling.
Naples biscuits: Soak up moisture and help thicken the pulp into a spoonable body.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the apples.

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Blueberryfits better
Orangefits better
Applethe original

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