Name: Washington Pudding
Ingredients: apples; eggs; 1 ounce butter; a little cream; candied or grated lemon peel; sugar; 1 tablespoon brandy

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Washington 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

Scald and pulp the apples.
Add one well-beaten egg for each large apple.

Mix and bake

Mix in butter, cream, lemon peel, sugar, and brandy.
Bake in a thin pastry in a mild oven at 350°F (175°C).

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,291 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 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 bulk and moisture of the pudding, softened by scalding and pulping.
Eggs: Bind the pulped apples and set as the pudding bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, softening the texture of the filling.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Apricotfits better
Strawberryfits better
Lemonthe original

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