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Dessert

Boiled Apple Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, butter, sugar, apples, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Boiled Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  3. Add sugar and mix well.

  4. Gradually add ice water until a dough forms.

  5. Roll out the dough on a floured surface.

Fill and boil

  1. Place the rolled dough into a basin.

  2. Add sliced apples on top of the dough.

  3. Fold the edges of the dough over the apples.

  4. Tie the pudding tightly with string and place it in a pot of boiling water.

  5. Steam for about 1 hour until cooked through.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once it is hydrated.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and turns light.
Unsalted butter
Cut into the flour to create flaky, tender layers in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown slightly as it cooks.
Apples
Provide moisture and tartness, softening as they steam inside the dough.

The step that matters

Tie the pudding tightly with string. A loose seal lets boiling water soak into the dough and dilute the filling, leaving the pudding soggy. A snug wrap keeps steam around the pudding so it cooks evenly.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, 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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