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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A baked apple dessert with a batter of flour, sugar, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Apple Pudding

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the apples in a pudding dish and sprinkle with sugar, water, and nutmeg.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes.

Add the batter and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg, melted butter, milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, flour, and salt until smooth.

  2. Remove the apples from the oven and pour the batter over them.

  3. Return to the oven and bake until golden brown.

  4. Serve with Hard Sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main fruit body and moisture that soften and sweeten during baking.
Egg
Adds structure and helps the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the bulk of the batter and gives it structure as it sets.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and reacts with baking soda to help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the topping brown and taste fuller.

The step that matters

Pouring the batter over the hot apples. The batter should be poured over the partly baked apples and returned to the oven promptly. Chemical leavening starts as soon as the batter is mixed, so delay weakens the rise and the batter may spread unevenly over the fruit.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, egg, butter, milk, cream, 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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