Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Apple Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Butter a basin and line it with a suet crust.
Pare, core, and cut the apples into pieces, then fill the basin with them.
Add sugar to taste, lemon peel, and lemon juice.
Cover with crust and seal the edges well.
Flour a cloth and tie it securely over the pudding.
Boil and serve
Place the basin in plenty of boiling water.
Boil for 1.5 to 2.5 hours, depending on size, ensuring the water remains boiling.
Turn out of the basin and serve immediately.
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.
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Apple and sugar 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
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the crust that encloses the apples while they cook.
- Suet
- Adds fat that makes the crust rich and tender as it steams.
- Apples
- Provide the fruit filling, becoming soft and moist as they cook.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the apples.
The step that matters
Keep the water boiling throughout. Steaming relies on steady boiling water; if the water drops below a boil, the pudding cooks unevenly and the crust can turn heavy and soggy.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, lemon, sugar):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Orangefits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, lemon, 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.
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