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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A baked apple pudding with marmalade, currants, raisins, wine, eggs, milk, and crushed biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Apple Pudding

Why it works: Apple and white wine work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the apple marmalade

  1. Cut the apples into very thin slices and boil them for 30 minutes with sugar, currants, raisins, and white wine until they mash into a marmalade.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Grease the bottom of a deep circular dish with butter.

  2. Layer crushed sugar biscuits at the bottom, followed by a layer of apple marmalade, and repeat, forming a conical shape with biscuit on top.

  3. Beat the eggs with milk and kirsch-wasser, then pour this mixture over the pudding.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the dish on a three-legged stand in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve immediately after removing from the oven.

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. Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Raisin + biscuittop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Break down into a soft marmalade that forms the moist, sweet filling layers.
Eggs
Set with the milk into a custard that binds the pudding and holds its shape.
Sugar biscuits
Soak up moisture and give the pudding a crumbly, structured body between apple layers.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the eggs set in.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the apple marmalade and helps it break down into a smooth mash.

The step that matters

Boil the apples until they mash into a marmalade. Apples must cook long enough to break down fully; under-cooked slices stay firm and leave the layers uneven and watery rather than spreadable.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, raisin, white wine, butter, biscuit, 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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