Skip to main content
Dessert

Batter and Fruit Pudding

A baked apple pudding made with a flour and milk batter, boiled and served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Batter and Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour smoothly with a small portion of the milk.

  2. Gradually add the rest of the milk and the well-beaten eggs.

Assemble

  1. Butter a basin thickly and fill it nearly to the brim with the prepared apples.

  2. Pour the batter over the fruit until the basin is full.

  3. Tie a buttered and floured cloth tightly over the top.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Turn out onto a hot dish and sprinkle thickly with sugar.

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, custard-like pudding.
Flour
Thickens the milk and egg batter so it holds its shape around the fruit.
Apples
Provide the fruit base and moisture that softens as the pudding cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the batter, adding softness and richness as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the batter to the flour. Mixing the flour with a little milk first keeps it from forming lumps, so the batter stays smooth and evenly thickened when the rest of the milk and eggs are added.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

More apple pudding recipes

Baked 128Boiled 64Steamed 30Sago 26Swiss 24Boston 17 See all 461 →

You might also like

Apple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipesApple TartApple Tart24 recipes