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Dessert

Apple Pudding with Lemon Sauce

A baked apple pudding topped with a lemon‑flavored sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 with Lemon Sauce

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 batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter, egg, sugar, milk, flour, and baking powder.

  3. Fill the bottom of a pan with sliced apples and pour the batter over them.

  4. Bake for 30 minutes.

Make the lemon sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil the hot water and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Add the butter, egg, and corn starch to the boiling mixture.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice and grated rind last.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter so the pudding holds its shape when baked.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the batter and helps thicken the sauce as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the batter rises and becomes light.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiling sauce into a smooth, glossy consistency.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and the sauce and adds moisture to the batter.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma to the sauce from its juice and rind.

The step that matters

Stir the cornstarch sauce while it boils. Cornstarch must be heated while stirred to swell and thicken evenly; if it sits unstirred or boils unevenly, lumps form and the sauce stays thin or grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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