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Dessert

Duff Pudding

A baked apple and raisin pudding with a buttery batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Duff 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a pudding dish.

  3. Place the quartered apples in the dish.

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and melted butter to the dry ingredients and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture over the apples in the dish.

  4. Bake until set and golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter around the apples as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the pudding brown at the edges.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and contributes to golden browning in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and works with baking soda to lift and lighten the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the pudding rise.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden brown. Underbaking leaves the batter wet and gummy, while overbaking dries the crumb. The pudding is ready when the centre is set and the top is golden.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, egg, sugar, cream, 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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