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Dessert

A Common Apple Pudding

A suet crust apple pudding boiled for over an hour, served with optional butter and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Common Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix flour and suet until crumbly.

  2. Roll the dough thin.

Fill and wrap

  1. Fill the dough with the apples.

  2. Add the lemon juice and rind.

  3. Add nutmeg or cinnamon if preferred.

  4. Tie the dough in a cloth.

Boil and finish

  1. Boil for 1 hour and 20 minutes before Christmas.

  2. Boil for 20 to 30 minutes longer after.

  3. Stir in butter when sweetened, if desired.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the dough's structure, setting the pudding's body as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and moist during boiling.
Boiling apples
Provide the main filling, cooking down to soft, tart fruit.
Lemon juice and rind
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet apple filling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the finished pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the dough in a cloth. The cloth must be tied snugly but with room for the dough to swell, so the pudding holds its shape without bursting or taking on water while boiling.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, apple, lemon, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, apple, lemon, 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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