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Dessert

Steamed Apple Pudding

A steamed dessert made with a dough of flour, butter, baking soda, and apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Steamed Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour and cream of tartar together.

  2. Rub in the softened butter.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in cold milk and stir into the flour, adding more milk to make a soft dough.

Assemble and steam

  1. Spread half of the dough over the bottom and up the sides of a shallow dish or pan.

  2. Layer the sliced apples over the dough.

  3. If the apples are very tart, add a little extra baking soda for lightness.

  4. Cover the apples with the remaining dough.

  5. Steam until the fruit and dough are cooked through.

  6. Serve with your choice of 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the pudding together.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the dough.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough and reacts with baking soda to help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to produce gas, lightening the pudding.
Tart apples
Provide the fruit filling and their tartness balances the sweetness of the dough.

The step that matters

Adding extra baking soda for tart apples. Baking soda needs an acid to react and create lift. Adding more to tart apples without adjusting the acid balance can leave a soapy or bitter taste, so measure carefully and keep the dough evenly mixed.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, butter, 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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