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Dessert

Boiled Apple Pudding

A boiled pudding made from mashed potatoes, apples, butter, flour, cinnamon, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Boiled Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and quarter the apples, then place them in cold water.

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed potatoes and butter, mixing well.

  3. Add enough flour and cold water to form a stiff paste.

  4. Roll out the dough to about 1 inch thick.

Assemble and boil

  1. Dip a pudding cloth in boiling water and lay it over a large bowl.

  2. Place the crust into the cloth, then add half of the apples.

  3. Sprinkle with cinnamon and brown sugar, then add the remaining apples.

  4. Tie the cloth tightly and place it in boiling water.

  5. Turn the pudding frequently and boil for 3 hours.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Potato + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Potatoes
Mashed potatoes form the bulk of the dough and give it a soft, tender body.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the dough and keeps the crust tender and rich.
Flour
Gives the dough enough structure to hold together as a stiff paste.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling, becoming soft and sweet as they cook.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour to the apples.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth tightly and keep the pudding boiling. A loose cloth lets water seep in and makes the crust soggy, while letting the water stop boiling slows cooking and leaves the centre underdone. Turning the pudding helps it cook evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, apple, cinnamon, 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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