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Dessert

A Rich Apple-Pudding

A rich apple pudding made with grated apples, butter, eggs, and flavored with lemon rind, orange flower water, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Rich 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a baking dish with pastry and sprinkle candy peel over it.

Make and bake the pudding

  1. Grate the apples and mix with the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the lemon rind, beaten eggs, orange-flower water, brandy, and sugar; mix well.

  3. If the apples are not tart enough, add a little lemon juice.

  4. Pour the apple mixture into the dish and bake for 30 minutes.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  3. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  4. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide bulk and moisture, and their natural tartness balances the sugar.
Butter
Adds richness and a creamy, tender texture to the filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set during baking to give it structure.
Candy peel
Adds bursts of citrus sweetness and aroma throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Pour the apple mixture into the dish and bake for 30 minutes. Baking sets the beaten eggs into a custard-like filling. Underbaking leaves it loose and wet in the centre, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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

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