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Dessert

Apple Amber Pudding

A baked apple pudding with butter, brown sugar, lemon zest, and a sweetened egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and angelica match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 189 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Apple 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 crust

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line the edge of a pie dish with thin strips of pastry about 3 inches wide.

  3. Decorate the edge with overlapping leaves or small rounds of pastry, securing them with egg white.

Make the apple filling

  1. Peel and slice the apples, then stew them gently with butter, brown sugar, and lemon zest until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve and stir in the egg yolk.

  3. Pour the apple mixture into the pie dish and bake for about 20 minutes.

Top and finish

  1. Whisk the egg white until stiff and pile it on top of the pudding.

  2. Dredge liberally with caster sugar, decorate with cherries and angelica, and return to the oven until the egg white hardens and colors slightly.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Apple + angelicatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Break down into the soft, sweet body of the pudding filling.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds a caramel-like depth in the stewed apples.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the stewed apple filling.
Egg
The yolk enriches and sets the filling, while the whisked white forms the light, browning meringue topping.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg white for the topping. Egg white must be whisked until stiff so it holds its shape on the pudding. Under-whisked white will slump and not brown or crisp well in the oven.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

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