Name: Boiled Apple-pudding
Ingredients: 1 quart apples, peeled and quartered; 6 large potatoes, boiled and mashed; ½ pound butter; ½ pound flour; cold water, as needed; 1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon; 4 tablespoons brown sugar; flour, for dusting

Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Boiled Apple-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Soak the apples in cold water.
Drain the apples and mix them with cinnamon and brown sugar.

Make the pastry

Mash the potatoes with the butter.
Mix the mashed potatoes with flour and enough cold water to form a stiff pastry.
Roll out the pastry to about 1 inch thick.

Assemble and boil

Dip a large pudding cloth in boiling water and spread it inside a bowl.
Dredge the cloth with flour and spread the pastry over it.
Place the apple mixture in the crust and enclose it by drawing up the pastry.
Wet the edges to seal and tie the cloth tightly around the pudding.
Boil the pudding in a large pot of boiling water for 3 hours, keeping it covered.
Remove the cloth and serve with pudding 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.

Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Potato + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,012 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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: Provide the bulk of the filling and tart fruit flavour that balances the sweetness.
Potatoes: Add body and a tender, starchy texture to the stiff pastry.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, making the pastry tender and flavourful.
Flour: Gives the pastry structure so it holds together when boiled.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and caramel notes to the apple filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the pudding in the cloth. If the pastry edges are not wet and sealed, and the cloth is not tied tightly, water can seep in during the long boil and make the pudding soggy and loose. Dredging the cloth with flour helps the pastry release cleanly afterwards.

Swap the potato

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

Sweet potatofits better
Arrowrootfits better
Parsnipfits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, butter, flour, cinnamon, sugar. 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.

Apple Pudding256 recipes

Deep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipes

Apple Cake80 recipes

Orange Potato Bread80 recipes

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Boiled Apple-pudding