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Dessert

Amber Pudding

A baked apple dessert with butter, sugar, lemon, eggs, and puff pastry lining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Amber Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel, core, and slice the apples.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the apples, sugar, and butter.

  3. Peel the lemon thinly and squeeze the juice into the saucepan, adding the peel as well.

  4. Cook the mixture over medium heat until the apples are tender, about 45 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. Strain the apples through a sieve into a large bowl, using a wooden spoon to push them through.

  2. Stir in the yolks of the eggs.

Bake and top

  1. Line a 1‑pint pie dish with puff paste.

  2. Pour the apple mixture into the lined dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  3. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Once the pudding is light brown, spread the whipped egg whites on top and sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of sugar.

  5. Return the dish to the oven until the icing is light brown.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Break down into a soft, sweet pulp that forms the body of the pudding.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the filling, while whipped whites form the light topping.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the apple filling a smoother, rounder texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and caramelises slightly during cooking to give colour.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from the juice and peel, balancing the sweetness of the apples.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites hold air only when fully whipped and free of grease or yolk. Under-whipped or greasy whites will deflate and fail to form a light topping.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

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

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