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Dessert

Apple Desserts

A steamed apple dessert made by pouring a thick batter over apples and cooking in a steamer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Apple Desserts

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the steamer.

  2. Place the strained apples in a pudding dish.

  3. Mix the dry ingredients together.

  4. Chop or rub in the butter.

  5. Add enough milk to make a thick drop batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the batter over the apples in the pudding dish.

  2. Cook in the steamer for about 45 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately with sweetened 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Strained apples
Provide the moist fruit base that softens and flavours the cake as it steams.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as it sets during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the batter rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives richness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the dry ingredients into a thick drop batter.

The step that matters

Add enough milk to make a thick drop batter. Too much milk makes the batter thin, so it spreads rather than sitting as a dumpling-like layer over the fruit. Too little leaves dry, floury pockets. Baking powder works best when the batter is mixed promptly and not overworked, since gluten forms when flour is handled heavily.

Swap the apple

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

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

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