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Dessert

Apple or Peach Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, baking powder, milk, egg, butter, and sliced apples or peaches, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Apple or Peach Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix and sift the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg and milk to the dry ingredients.

  3. Stir in the melted butter.

Assemble and steam

  1. Slice the peaches or apples and place them in molds, sprinkling with sugar.

  2. Pour the batter over the fruit.

  3. Steam for 1 to 2 hours using a lard kettle or cottolene kettle as a steamer.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as it sets during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and forms a batter that sets into a moist crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and adds flavor contrast.

The step that matters

Steaming for 1 to 2 hours. Steam must stay steady and the kettle must not boil dry. Uneven or weak steam can leave the pudding dense or undercooked in the center, while the batter needs sustained gentle heat to set fully.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, butter, 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.

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