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
Peel, core, and slice the apples.
Place the apples, sugar, and butter in a saucepan.
Wash the lemon, peel it thinly, squeeze the juice into the saucepan, and add the peel.
Cook and strain
Cook the mixture over medium heat until the apples are tender, about 45 minutes.
Set a sieve over a large bowl, pour the cooked apples into it, and press them through with a wooden spoon.
Stir the yolks of the eggs into the apple mixture.
Bake and finish
Line a 1-pint pie dish with puff pastry.
Pour the apple mixture into the pie dish and bake at 400 °F (200 °C) for 20 minutes.
Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
When the pudding is light brown, remove it from the oven, spread the whipped egg whites on top, and sprinkle with sugar.
Return the dish to the oven until the topping is light brown.
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.
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,706 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Cook down into a smooth pulp that forms the body of the pudding and gives moisture.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and browns in the oven to give the topping its colour.
- Butter
- Adds fat, giving the pudding a richer flavour and softer texture.
- Eggs
- Yolks enrich and help set the pudding, while whipped whites make a light topping.
- Lemon
- Juice adds acidity to balance the sweetness, and the peel adds aroma.
The step that matters
Browning the meringue topping. Whipped egg whites brown quickly in a hot oven. Removing the pudding at the right colour and watching the second bake keeps the topping light and prevents it from drying out or becoming bitter.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, butter, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Orangefits better
- Raspberryfits better
- 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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