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Dessert

Steamed Apple Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sour apples, sugar, cinnamon, butter, and biscuit dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Steamed Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

  1. Fill a mold or dish half full with the prepared sour apples.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, then add small pieces of butter.

  3. Cover the top with biscuit dough and cut a slit in the center for steam to escape.

Cook and serve

  1. Steam for 1.5 hours or bake at 350°F (175°C) until the apples are tender.

  2. Serve with lemon sauce.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + biscuittop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together312 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sour apples
Provide tart flavor and bulk, softening into the moist filling as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sourness of the apples.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and keeping the filling moist.
Biscuit dough
Forms a soft topping that cooks through and covers the apples while they steam or bake.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that complements the apples and sugar.

The step that matters

Cut a slit in the dough. The slit lets steam escape, so pressure does not build under the topping and the dough cooks through rather than turning gummy or soggy.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, butter, biscuit. 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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