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Dessert

Pommes d'Api, Anglo-Français—

A baked apple pudding made with apples, sugar, butter, flour, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pommes d'Api, Anglo-Français—

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Combine apples, sugar, and butter in a large stewpan.

  2. Cook covered until apples are soft.

  3. Transfer cooked apples onto a baking sheet.

Make the pastry

  1. Mix flour with water to make a firm pastry.

  2. Roll out half of the pastry to ⅛ inch thickness.

  3. Butter a dome mold and line it with the rolled pastry, ensuring it does not fold over itself.

Assemble and cook

  1. Fill the lined mold with the cooked apples.

  2. Cover with remaining pastry and seal edges well.

  3. Cook the mold over a fire until the pudding is set.

  4. Remove the pudding from the mold and serve.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Rennet apples
Provide the bulk and fruit flavor, softening into the filling as they cook.
Pounded sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cooked apples taste rounded and rich.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and smooth texture in the cooked apples.
Flour
Forms the firm pastry that encloses and holds the pudding's shape.

The step that matters

Cook the apples until fully soft before filling. Apples that are still firm will not collapse into a smooth filling and can leave air pockets or uneven texture. Cooking them through, covered, lets their pectin and cell walls soften so the filling sets evenly inside the pastry.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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