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Dessert

Sjeamed Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with apples, sugar, water, spices, and biscuit dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sjeamed Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Combine apples, sugar, water, and spices in a deep tin basin and place it on the stove.

  2. Heat until boiling.

Make the dough

  1. While the apples cook, prepare biscuit dough using half the quantity from the appendix.

  2. Roll the dough to ½ inch thickness.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the boiling apples with the rolled dough.

  2. Cover the pudding with a buttered pan.

  3. Boil gently for 12 minutes.

  4. Remove the upper pan.

  5. Place the lower pan on a china dish to serve.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + biscuittop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together312 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Apple + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Sugar and cinnamon 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
Soften into the fruit base that gives the pudding its body and moisture.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and balances their tartness.
Biscuit dough
Forms the topping that cooks through in the steam to become a soft, tender crust.

The step that matters

Boil gently under the covers. Covering the boiling apples with dough and a buttered pan traps steam, which cooks the dough through. Gentle boiling keeps that steam steady, so the dough cooks evenly while the fruit holds its shape and the water does not boil away.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, biscuit. 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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