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Apple Meringue Pudding

A baked apple pudding topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Meringue Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Prepare the apples as for a pie and stew until almost a pulp. Sweeten and spice to taste.

  2. While the apples are hot, gradually stir in the yolks of the eggs.

  3. Beat the mixture until very light, then pour it into a buttered dish and bake for 10 minutes.

Top and serve

  1. Make the meringue by beating the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar and the almond essence.

  2. Spread the meringue evenly over the pudding and return it to the oven to brown slightly.

  3. Serve hot or cold, as preferred.

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. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Apple + almondtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the base, while whipped whites form the light meringue topping.
Stewed apples
Provide the moist, soft fruit body of the pudding.
White sugar
Sweetens the apples and stabilises the whipped egg whites in the meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be whipped to firm peaks before the sugar is added; under-beaten or greasy whites will not hold their volume, leaving a flat, weeping meringue. Any trace of yolk or fat in the whites prevents proper whipping.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, almond. 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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