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Dessert

Marlborough Pudding

A baked apple and lemon custard pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Marlborough Pudding

Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Marlborough Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a baking dish with pie paste.

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine grated apples, sugar, butter, beaten eggs, lemon peel, and lemon juice.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined dish.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until set and golden.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the filling into a custard-like texture as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that makes the filling tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown during baking.
Grated apples
Provide moisture and body to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves it runny in the centre, while overbaking can make it curdled, dry, or rubbery.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

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