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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A baked apple dessert with butter, bread crumbs, eggs, milk, sugar, lemon rind, and nutmeg.

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

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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 the apples

  1. Peel and slice the apples, then stew them slowly with sugar and a little water until tender.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the butter, bread crumbs, milk, beaten eggs, nutmeg, and lemon rind.

  2. Mix everything well and pour into a greased pie dish.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle the top with brown bread crumbs, add small pieces of butter on top, and bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firmly when baked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and add body so the pudding holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top brown in the oven.
Apples
Provide the main fruit flavour and moisture once stewed until tender.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and eggs to form a soft, custard-like texture.

The step that matters

Stewing the apples until tender. Apples that are not cooked fully soft will stay firm and uneven in the baked pudding. Stewing slowly breaks down the fruit and evenly distributes its moisture through the mixture.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, egg, sugar, lemon, milk, nutmeg. 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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