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Dessert

Nice Apple Pudding

A baked apple pudding made with puff pastry, apples, butter, sugar, eggs, rose water, lemon, and candied citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and rose are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,174 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Nice Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples.

  2. Stew the apples in water with the lemon rind until soft.

  3. Beat the apples to a pulp or strain them.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix in melted butter, powdered sugar, beaten eggs, rose water, and lemon juice.

  2. Line a dish with puff pastry.

  3. Pour the apple mixture into the dish and bake until the pastry is done.

  4. Decorate the top with strips of candied citron and lemon peel.

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. Lemon + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Cooked down to a pulp, they form the body and flavour of the pudding.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the apple mixture into a firm, sliceable custard.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, softer texture.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the smooth apple mixture.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky base that holds the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Beating or straining the apples to a smooth pulp. Lumps of apple left in the filling bake unevenly and give a grainy texture instead of a smooth, uniform pudding. Thorough straining or beating before adding the eggs keeps the set consistent.

Swap the apple

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

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

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