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Dessert

Apple Custard Pudding

A baked pudding made with apples, sugar, butter, lemon, bread crumbs, flour, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 Custard 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 filling

  1. Place the apples and water in a saucepan and cook until soft.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar, butter, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the bread crumbs and flour, then add to the apple mixture.

  4. Stir in the beaten eggs until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve with a sugar 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Apples
Cook down to a soft base that gives the pudding its body and fruit flavour.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the mixture, giving it a light, tender structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples and lemon.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender texture and flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs until well combined. Eggs must be evenly distributed so the pudding sets uniformly in the oven. Uneven mixing can leave pockets of unset egg or dense areas.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, lemon, bread, flour, 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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