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Dessert

Apple-batter Pudding

A baked apple pudding made with a batter of egg, butter, sugar, milk, flour, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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-batter 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. Place sliced apples in a pudding dish with water and sugar.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until apples are nearly tender.

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix egg, melted butter, sugar, milk, flour, salt, and baking powder to make the batter.

  2. Pour the batter over the apples and bake for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with sweetened cream or pudding sauce.

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake-like pudding as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firm while adding structure and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the batter rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the batter.
Sliced apples
Soften under heat and release juices that moisten the pudding below the batter.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and richness to the batter.

The step that matters

Bake the apples until nearly tender before adding the batter. Apples given a head start soften before the batter sets over them. Adding batter to raw apples can leave them firm, while the batter may overbake first.

Swap the apple

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

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

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