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Dessert

Steamed Apple Pudding

A steamed pudding made with apples, flour, sugar, butter, baking powder, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Steamed Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat your steamer.

  2. Fill a baking dish with sliced tart apples.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, sugar, butter, and baking powder.

  2. Moisten the mixture with milk until it forms a thick batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Spread the batter over the apples in the baking dish.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with sauce or cream.

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 + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 starchy structure that sets the pudding once steamed.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown lightly.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderises the crumb and gives richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, lifting the batter so it becomes light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour into a batter and adds moisture to the crumb.
Sliced tart apples
Provide moisture and a sharp acidity that balances the sweet batter.

The step that matters

Keep the steam steady for the full 2 hours. Steam is the only heat source here, so if it drops or the pot boils dry, the pudding cooks unevenly. Uneven heat can leave the batter dense or gummy, and the baking powder cannot lift a batter that has not set.

Swap the apple

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

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

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