Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Apple Jonathan
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Fill a pudding dish with sliced apples.
In a bowl, mix buttermilk, baking soda, and enough flour to create a batter that spreads easily.
Pour the batter over the apples.
Bake and serve
Bake until the apples are tender.
Invert onto a platter and beat the soft apples smoothly onto the crust.
Add a lump of butter and sprinkle with nutmeg or cinnamon.
Serve hot with sweet cream or milk.
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.
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,721 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Buttermilk + creamtop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together674 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Buttermilk
- Adds acidity and moisture to the batter, giving a tender, slightly tangy crust.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the buttermilk's acidity to produce gas that helps the batter rise.
- Flour
- Thickens the buttermilk mixture into a batter that holds together and forms the crust.
- Apples
- Provide the fruit base that softens during baking and sweetens the pudding.
The step that matters
Bake until the apples are tender. Underbaked apples stay firm and starchy, while the batter may not set fully. Baking until the apples yield to a fork ensures they are cooked through and the crust is set.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (buttermilk, flour, butter, nutmeg, cream):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against buttermilk, flour, butter, nutmeg, cream. 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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