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Dessert

Prune and Apple Pudding

A baked pudding of prunes and apples topped with biscuit dough, spiced with nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Prune and Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Soak the prunes overnight, then stew until tender and remove the stones.

  2. Mix the prunes with the thinly sliced apples and place in a buttered baking dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Sprinkle the mixture with sugar, spices, and grated lemon rind.

  2. Cover with biscuit dough and bake until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with whipped cream.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Nutmeg + biscuittop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Prunes
Soften during stewing and add dark, sweet, moist body to the pudding.
Apples
Release moisture as they cook and add a tart contrast to the sweet prunes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the topping and fruit brown as they bake.
Biscuit dough
Bakes into a golden, soft-textured crust that covers the fruit.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that complements the stewed fruit.
Lemon
Its grated rind adds bright aroma that lifts the rich fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Stew the prunes until fully tender. Dried prunes must be fully softened by soaking and stewing, because underdone fruit stays tough and chewy once baked under the dough.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, clove, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, 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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