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Dessert

Baked Apple Pudding, or Custard

A baked custard made from stewed apples, sugar, butter, lemon, egg yolks, and flour or crushed biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Apple Pudding, or Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the apple base

  1. Stew the apples with sugar and water until smooth, stirring often.

  2. While hot, mix in the butter, lemon rind, and juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Gradually stir in the beaten egg yolks and flour or crushed biscuits.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes or until firm in the middle.

  3. For extra flavor, pour clarified butter on top and sprinkle with sugar before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard as they set, giving it a firm, sliceable body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the apple base.
Apples
Provide the bulk and fruit flavor, cooking down to a smooth purée.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps give the custard its browned surface.
Flour
Adds body so the custard holds its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the warm apple base. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot mixture too quickly. Stirring them in gradually, with the base no longer boiling, keeps the custard smooth and lets the proteins set evenly during baking.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, lemon, egg, 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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