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Dessert

Steamed Apple Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sliced sour apples covered by a simple flour dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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. Fill a two-quart pudding mold two-thirds full with sliced sour apples.

  2. Butter the rim and edges of the mold and the inside of the cover.

  3. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl. Add the milk and mix with a knife until combined.

  4. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out to fit the mold.

  5. Lay the rolled dough over the apples in the mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the mold closely and steam for one hour in a steamer. Alternatively, place the mold on a trivet in a kettle surrounded by water, ensuring the water does not touch the cover, and cook for one hour.

  2. To serve, remove the cover from the mold and loosen the pastry around the edges.

  3. Invert the mold onto a serving platter, leaving the crust on the bottom and the apples on top. Cut and serve like a pie.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Apple + buttertop 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 dough that becomes the crust over the apples.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming so the dough rises and turns light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the mixture forms a soft, workable dough.
Sour apples
Provide tart flavor and moisture that cooks into the filling beneath the crust.

The step that matters

Keep the water from touching the cover. In the kettle method, water on the cover can seep into the mold and make the pudding soggy. Keeping the cover dry keeps the crust tender and the steam gentle.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter, 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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