Name: Apple Pudding Baked
Ingredients: ½ lb stale crusts, broken up; 1 pint skim milk; 1 tablespoon sugar; 2 tablespoons minced suet; ½ lb chopped apples; 1 egg

Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Apple Pudding Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Soak the broken crusts in skim milk for 1 hour.
Beat the soaked crusts with a fork.
Add sugar, minced suet, chopped apples, and the egg; mix well.
Grease a tin pie dish and pour the mixture into it.

Bake and serve

Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 hour.
Serve with sauce made from apple peels and cores.

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.

Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Stale crusts: Soak up the milk and form the bulk of the pudding's soft body.
Egg: Binds the mixture and helps it set as it bakes.
Suet: Adds fat that enriches the texture and richness of the pudding.
Apples: Add moisture and a fruity flavour throughout the pudding.