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Dessert

Apple Christmas Pudding

A baked pudding made from apples, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and boiled rice.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare, core, and quarter the apples.

  2. Add water, cover, and boil quickly for 5 minutes.

  3. Press the apples through a sieve.

Make the mixture

  1. Add butter and sugar to the apple puree.

  2. Beat the eggs until light, then add milk and hot boiled rice.

  3. Combine the apple mixture with the egg mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 4 hours.

  2. Serve cold.

  3. Optionally, add lemon or orange rind.

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 + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main body, tartness and fruity flavour of the pudding.
Eggs
Set the mixture during baking to give it a firm, custard-like structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the baked pudding tender.
Hot boiled rice
Adds starchy body and helps hold moisture in the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the apples.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Bake gently at a low temperature. Egg proteins set slowly at low heat. If the oven is too hot, the eggs can curdle and the pudding turns grainy or watery instead of smooth and creamy.

Swap the apple

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

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

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