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Dessert

Boiled Apple Pudding

A boiled apple pudding made with apples, flour, suet, brown sugar, lemon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pare, core, and quarter as many fine juicy apples as will weigh two pounds when done. Strew among them a quarter of a pound of brown sugar, and add a grated nutmeg, and the juice and yellow peel of a large lemon.

Make the pastry

  1. Prepare a paste of suet and flour, in the proportion of a pound of chopped suet to two pounds of flour.

Boil and serve

  1. Roll it out of moderate thickness; lay the apples in the centre, and close the paste nicely over them in the form of a large dumpling; tie it in a cloth and boil it three hours.

  2. Send it to table hot, and eat with it cream sauce, or with butter and sugar.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

516Calories
13 gProtein
2 gFat
109 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Apples (in the method)
Provide the fruit filling, whose juice and natural sweetness flavour the pudding as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat to the paste, keeping it rich and tender during the long boil.
Flour
Forms the paste that encloses the filling and holds the dumpling together while boiling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses flavour that complements the apples and spice.

The step that matters

Closing the paste over the apples. If the paste is too thin or not sealed well, juices can leak out and the filling may become watery or break through during the three-hour boil. Even thickness and a tight seal keep the dumpling intact.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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