Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Pudding

A baked dessert made with eggs, rusks, butter, orange juice, brown sugar, apples, and pastry border.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Apple Pudding

Why it works: Orange and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg yolks and egg whites separately.

  2. Mix the beaten yolks with the pounded rusks.

Assemble

  1. Pour in the melted butter, orange juice, and brown sugar; mix well.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a deep dish and fill it with pounded apples.

  3. Make a border with the pastry around the edge.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the pudding while setting.
Egg whites
Whisked separately to add lightness and structure to the pudding.
Rusks
Soak up the liquid and give the pudding body.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich texture.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling and moisture as the pudding bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Baking only until the custard-like mixture sets keeps it tender; overbaking causes the egg proteins to tighten and turn dry and rubbery.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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.

More apple pudding recipes

Baked 128Boiled 64Steamed 30Sago 26Swiss 24Boston 17 See all 461 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipes