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Dessert

Apple Christmas Pudding

A baked apple pudding with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and rice, served with cream or lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple Christmas 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 the apples

  1. Boil the apples in water for 5 minutes.

  2. Press the boiled apples through a sieve.

  3. Mix the butter and sugar into the apples until combined.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add the milk and hot rice to the eggs.

  3. Combine the apple mixture with the egg mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve cold with cream or 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main fruit body and flavor, and soften into a pulp when boiled and sieved.
Eggs
Set the pudding as they cook, giving it a custard-like structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps form a soft, tender custard texture.
Hot boiled rice
Adds body and starch that thickens the mixture and gives it a soft, pudding-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding runny while overbaking can make it dry and curdled. Watching for a set centre keeps the custard tender.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, butter, sugar, egg, milk, rice, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, butter, sugar, egg, milk, rice, 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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