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Dessert

Nottingham Pudding

A baked apple pudding with butter, sugar, nutmeg, and a flour‑egg batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Nottingham Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pare and core the apples without breaking them.

  3. Fill the center of each apple with butter, moist sugar, and grated nutmeg.

  4. Place the apples side by side in a well-buttered pie dish.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with a little cold water until smooth.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, salt, and enough milk to achieve a thick cream consistency.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter over the apples in the pie dish.

  2. Bake for 1.5 hours until golden.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Butter and flour 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

Apples
Hold their shape and release juice and flavour as they cook beneath the batter.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and gives the batter structure as it sets in the oven.
Eggs
Set the batter as they cook, giving it a custard-like, sliceable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the filling brown.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the apples caramelise slightly during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a thick cream consistency.

The step that matters

Pour the batter over the apples in the pie dish. The batter must be smooth and thick cream-like before it goes in. Lumps of flour won't cook out, and a batter that is too thin may run around the apples instead of setting into a crust-like top.

Swap the apple

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

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

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