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Dessert

Apple Batter Pudding

A baked apple pudding made with sliced apples, eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, milk, and a pinch of salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Apple and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Apple Batter 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs with a pinch of salt.

  3. Add the sugar, flour, baking powder, and milk, mixing until smooth.

  4. Fold in the sliced apples.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown and set.

  2. Serve warm with caramel sauce or 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. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a tender custard-like crumb when baked.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the pudding rises and becomes lighter.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it bakes soft and cohesive.
Apples
Add moisture, sweetness and tartness, and soften as the pudding bakes.

The step that matters

Mixing the batter until smooth. Mixing the flour into the eggs and milk until no lumps remain gives an even batter; the flour's starch and proteins then set evenly as it bakes, so the pudding bakes uniformly rather than forming dry pockets.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, milk. 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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