Name: Apple Pudding
Ingredients: 5 large sour apples, chopped; 1 cup raisins; 1 cup sugar; 1 cup sweet milk; 1 cup flour; ½ cup butter, softened; 2 eggs; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple 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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
Add the eggs and mix well.
Stir in the chopped apples, raisins, milk, flour, and salt until combined.

Bake and serve

Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.
Bake for 1 hour or until set.
Serve with any sauce of your choice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,920 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Sour apples: Provide moisture and tartness that balances the sweetness of the pudding.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter texture.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding when baked.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps tenderise the texture when creamed with butter.

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Coconutfits about as well
Applethe original

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