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Dessert

Apple Meringue Pudding

A baked apple dessert topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Meringue Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the apple base

  1. Prepare the apples as for a pie and stew until almost a pulp.

  2. Sweeten and spice the apple mixture to taste.

  3. While the apples are hot, gradually stir in the egg yolks.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Pour the apple mixture into a buttered dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.

  3. Cover the baked apples with the beaten egg whites mixed with 2 tablespoons of sugar and almond extract.

  4. Spread the meringue evenly and quickly, then return to the oven to brown slightly.

  5. Serve hot or cold, as preferred.

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 + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Apple + almondtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 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

Stewed apples
Form the soft, moist base of the pudding.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the apple base; whites whip into the meringue topping that sets and browns.
White sugar
Sweetens the apple base and stabilises the meringue for a glossy, sweet top.
Butter
Greases the dish so the pudding releases cleanly and browns at the edges.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolks into the hot apples. Adding yolks gradually while the apples are hot tempers them, so they thicken smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps.

Swap the apple

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

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

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