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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A steamed pudding made with a buttered mold, pudding paste, apples stewed in syrup, then boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Apple Pudding

Why it works: Butter and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a pudding mold or dish with butter.

  2. Fill the mold with Pudding Paste, ¼ inch thick.

Make the filling

  1. Core and quarter enough apples to fill the dish.

  2. Stew the apples in ½ pint of syrup for 10 minutes.

  3. Let the apples cool, then place them and the syrup into the mold.

Seal and boil

  1. Cover with the paste, sealing it securely.

  2. Tie the mold in a cloth and boil for 1 to 2 hours, depending on size.

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.

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.

  1. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  2. Apple + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together742 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + syruptop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pudding paste
Forms the tender outer crust that encloses the fruit and syrup while steaming.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling, softening into a tender, moist layer when stewed and boiled.
Syrup
Sweetens the apples and adds moisture so the filling stays juicy during boiling.

The step that matters

Seal the paste securely. A loose seal lets water and syrup seep into the mold during boiling, making the pudding soggy and diluting the filling.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, syrup. 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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