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Dessert

Amber Pudding

A baked apple pudding with a puff pastry crust, topped with whipped egg whites and sprinkled with castor sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Amber 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 apple filling

  1. Combine the sliced apples, sugar, butter, lemon peel, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  2. Stew the apples until tender.

  3. Pass the stewed apples through a sieve into a large bowl.

  4. Stir the egg yolks into the apple puree.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the apple mixture into the lined pie dish.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 20 minutes.

Top and set

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the whipped egg whites on top of the pudding.

  3. Sprinkle with castor sugar.

  4. Return the pudding to the oven to set, ensuring it does not brown.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 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

Apples
Break down into a soft puree that forms the body of the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the apple puree and enrich it into a custard-like filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to form a light topping that sets in the oven.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps give it a caramel-like amber colour and flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the apple filling for a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Returning the pudding to the oven to set. Egg whites set quickly under heat and can over-brown or toughen if left too long. Keeping the oven gentle lets the meringue-style topping cook through while staying pale, as the step requires.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, lemon, 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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