Name: Apple Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint all-purpose flour; 1½ teaspoons baking powder; ¼ cup butter (½ the size of an egg); 1 cup milk; 5 apples, sliced; ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg; 2 tablespoons sugar

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 ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.
Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Stir in the milk to form a dough.
Roll out the dough thinly like pie crust.

Assemble and bake

In another bowl, combine the sliced apples, nutmeg, and sugar.
Place the apple mixture in a dish and cover with the rolled crust.
Bake for 1½ hours on the lower shelf of the oven.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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

All-purpose flour: Forms the main structure of the dough crust.
Butter: Cut into the flour to create a tender, flaky texture in the crust.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking so the crust rises and stays light.
Apples: Provide the fruit filling, softening and sweetening as they bake.
Milk: Hydrates the flour to bind the dough together.

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Applethe original

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