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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A baked apple custard made with eggs, milk, corn starch, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Apple Pudding

Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Bake the apples.

  2. Remove the cores.

  3. Beat the egg white until stiff.

  4. Mix the stiff egg white with the scraped apple.

Make the custard

  1. Stir the egg yolk and corn starch into the boiling milk.

  2. Add sugar and flavoring to the milk mixture.

  3. Combine the custard with the apple and egg mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a dish.

  2. Bake until browned.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  3. Apple + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together330 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Sour apples
Provide the main fruit body and tart flavor that balances the sweetness.
Egg
Yolk thickens the custard while the beaten white adds lightness and structure to the pudding.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiling milk into a custard by gelatinizing with heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which sets as it cools and bakes.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk and corn starch into the boiling milk. Corn starch must be fully dispersed before contact with hot liquid, or it clumps. Starch thickens only when heated, and the egg yolk adds richness and some setting power. Stirring steadily keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the apple

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

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

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