Skip to main content
Dessert

An Apple Hedge-hog, or Suedoise

A baked apple dessert layered with marmalade, beaten eggs, and almond spikes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

An Apple Hedge-hog, or Suedoise

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Stew the apples in a syrup made with water and sugar until tender.

  2. Drain the apples and arrange them in a dish in layers.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the spaces between the apples with marmalade and cover the entire dish with it.

  2. Beat the eggs to a solid froth and mix with sugar, then spread over the dish.

  3. Dust with fine sugar and place the almond spikes on top.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until the almonds are browned and the apples are heated through.

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 + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Apple + almondtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Form the bulk of the filling and soften into a tender, moist base when stewed.
Eggs
Beaten to a froth and baked, they set into a light, airy topping.
Apricot marmalade
Fills the gaps between apples and adds concentrated fruit sweetness and flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the stewing syrup and the egg topping, and helps the topping brown.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs to a solid froth. Egg foam holds air only if it is beaten enough and not deflated when mixed with sugar and spread. Under-beaten eggs stay dense and fail to set into a light topping.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pistachiofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, apricot, 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes