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Dessert

Boiled Apple Pudding

A boiled pudding made with eggs, milk, flour, apples, salt, served with sugar, butter, and nutmeg sauce.

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 ↓

Boiled Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs until well mixed.

  2. Add the milk and flour, and beat until smooth and light.

  3. Peel, quarter, and core the apples, then stir them into the batter along with the salt.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding bag and tie it securely.

  2. Boil the pudding in water for 2 hours.

  3. Turn the pudding out onto a dish and serve with sugar, butter, and nutmeg 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the pudding its set structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides starch that thickens the batter and gives the pudding body.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping the batter become smooth and light.
Tart apples
Add moisture, fruity acidity, and texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Tying the pudding bag securely. If the bag is not sealed tightly, water can enter during boiling and make the pudding soggy and diluted. A snug, well-tied bag keeps the batter contained so it cooks through evenly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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