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Dessert

Boiled Apple Pudding

A boiled pudding made with apples, bread crumbs, currants, sugar, wine, and spices, served with sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pare, core, and mince the apples.

  2. Mix the apples with bread crumbs, grated nutmeg, sugar, currants, lemon juice, and half the grated lemon rind.

  3. Beat the eggs well and moisten the mixture with them, then mix everything together, adding the wine last.

Boil and serve

  1. Put the pudding in a buttered mold and tie it down with a cloth.

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours and serve with sweet sauce.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add richness and structure as the pudding sets.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding body and a soft, cake-like crumb.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balance the sugar and keep the pudding light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture of the pudding.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and moistens the mixture when added last.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth down firmly over the buttered mold. A loose cloth lets water seep into the pudding during the long boil, making it soggy. A snug seal keeps the steam working on the batter so it cooks evenly and holds its shape.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, apple, bread, lemon, sugar, wine, nutmeg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, apple, bread, lemon, sugar, wine, nutmeg. 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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