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Dessert

Boiled Apple Pudding

A boiled apple pudding made with flour crust, apples, sugar, lemon peel, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a basin and line it with some of the crust.

  2. Pare, core, and slice the apples, then fill the basin with them.

  3. Add sugar, lemon peel, and lemon juice, then cover with crust.

  4. Pinch the edges together, flour the cloth, and place it over the pudding.

  5. Tie it securely and place it in boiling water.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for 1.5 to 2.5 hours, depending on size.

  2. Turn it out of the basin and serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the crust that encloses the apples and holds the pudding together while it boils.
Butter
Greases the basin and enriches the crust, helping it release cleanly and stay tender.
Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, softening as they cook and becoming moist and sweet.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the apple filling and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavor and helps keep the fruit fresh-tasting.

The step that matters

Tie it securely and place it in boiling water. If the cloth is loose or the seal is poor, water seeps into the pudding and makes the crust soggy. The water must also stay at a steady boil so the pudding cooks through evenly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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