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Dessert

Old-fashioned Apple Pudding

A baked apple pudding made with apples, stale bread crumbs, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt, served hot with custard, wine, or lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Old-fashioned Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Pare and chop the apples finely.

  2. Mix the apples with the bread crumbs.

  3. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately until very light.

  4. Add the yolks, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the crumb mixture.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-greased mold and cover.

  2. Boil for 3 hours.

  3. Serve hot with custard, wine, or lemon 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.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten whites trap air and give the pudding a light, set structure, while yolks add richness.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the apples, giving the pudding body.
Tart apples
Provide moisture, fruity acidity, and the main flavour of the pudding.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while they are whipped. Stirring them vigorously knocks that air out, so the pudding turns dense instead of light.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg. 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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