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Dessert

Apple Custard Pudding

A baked custard pudding made with apples, eggs, milk, cream, butter, and ratafias.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple base

  1. Cook the apples with a little sugar, lemon rind, and juice until soft.

  2. Pass the cooked apples through a sieve and stir in the butter and one egg.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish dusted with ratafia crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the remaining eggs with the milk and half the cream, sweeten to taste, and pour over the apple mixture.

  2. Bake slowly until just set.

  3. Warm the remaining cream and pour over the pudding before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 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 the main body and fruity flavour of the pudding once cooked and sieved.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure and a creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and softness to the set pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the apple mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and custard and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the custard and the final topping.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until just set. Egg custards turn grainy and watery if overbaked or heated too fast, because the proteins tighten and squeeze out liquid. Stopping once the centre just wobbles keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, egg, sugar, butter, milk, cream. 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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