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Dessert

Boiled Apple Pudding

A boiled pudding made with suet, flour, apples, sugar, spices, and butter, cooked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Make a paste with suet, flour, salt, and enough water to form a dough.

  2. Roll out the dough thinly and line a well-buttered basin with it.

  3. Trim the edges, leaving enough to fold over the top.

  4. Roll out the trimmings to cover the basin's top.

Fill and close

  1. Layer the sliced apples in the basin, sprinkling sugar, cloves, lemon peel, or nutmeg between layers.

  2. Add a small piece of butter and pack the apples tightly.

  3. Cover with the rolled-out dough, fold the edges, and press them down.

  4. Tie a floured pudding cloth over the basin.

Boil

  1. Place the basin in a saucepan of boiling water, ensuring it's covered with water.

  2. Boil for 2 to 3 hours, depending on the size.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds richness and a tender, crumbly texture to the pastry crust.
All-purpose flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the pudding together while it boils.
Apples
Provide the main filling, becoming soft and moist as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and balances their natural tartness.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the filling and helps the basin release cleanly.

The step that matters

Keep the basin fully submerged while boiling. If the water drops below the basin's top, the exposed dough dries and cooks unevenly. Steady, covered boiling cooks the pudding gently and evenly through.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, apple, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, apple, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, butter. 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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