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Dessert

Apple Cornmeal Pudding

A steamed pudding made with apples, cornmeal, milk, suet, molasses, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Apple Cornmeal Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the sweet milk, cornmeal, salt, chopped suet, molasses, and baking soda.

  2. Add the sliced apples and stir well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 4 hours.

  3. Serve hot with your choice of pudding 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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  2. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Apple + molassestop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together970 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the pudding and sets into a firm, sliceable body as it cooks.
Apples
Add moisture and fruity sweetness, softening into the batter as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep, caramel-like flavor.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and keeps the pudding moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the pudding and help it rise.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and forms the liquid base of the batter.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steam must stay steady and the mold must be sealed, or water can seep in and make the pudding soggy. Gentle, continuous heat lets the cornmeal set evenly without drying out at the edges.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses. 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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