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Steamed Apple Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread, butter, stewed apples, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Steamed Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a mold with slices of bread and butter.

  2. Add a layer of stewed apples.

  3. Continue layering with more bread and butter until the mold is filled.

Custard and steam

  1. Beat the eggs and add the milk.

  2. Pour the egg and milk mixture over the bread and apples.

  3. Steam for 1 hour and serve with liquid 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the milk mixture into a custard that binds the bread and apples together.
Milk
Soaks into the bread and forms the custard with the eggs, adding moisture.
Bread
Absorbs the custard and forms the soft, layered body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the bread layers and helps prevent sticking.
Stewed apples
Provide moisture, sweetness and fruit flavor between the bread layers.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, 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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