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Dessert

Apple Meringue Pudding

A baked apple sauce pudding topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Meringue 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.

Make the pudding base

  1. Run the apple sauce through a colander and beat with an egg whisk until light and creamy.

  2. Mix the bread crumbs, apple sauce, and melted butter together.

  3. Add mace, cinnamon, lemon juice, and the beaten egg yolks to the mixture.

  4. Beat the mixture hard for one minute.

Bake and serve

  1. Turn into a buttered pudding dish.

  2. Bake covered at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove from the oven.

  4. Spread with meringue made from the stiffened egg whites.

  5. Serve ice-cold with cream.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Apple + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the pudding, while whites form the meringue topping.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding body so it holds together when set.
Apple sauce
Provides the main moist base and apple flavour of the pudding.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Stiffen the egg whites for the meringue. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff and then spread gently on the pudding, because under-beaten or deflated whites will not hold their shape or brown well in the oven.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sauce, bread, egg, sherry, butter, lemon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sauce, bread, egg, sherry, butter, lemon. 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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