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
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the pastry
Mix flour, chopped suet, and salt in a bowl.
Gradually add water until a smooth paste forms.
Roll out the paste.
Line a basin with the rolled paste.
Fill and seal
Pare and quarter the cooking apples.
Sweeten the apples to taste.
Add lemon peel or cloves if desired.
Fill the lined basin with the prepared apples.
Cover the apples with more paste.
Seal the edges of the basin.
Cook and serve
Steam or bake in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C) until the apples are soft.
Serve warm.
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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Sugar + lemontop 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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the structure of the paste that encloses the apples.
- Beef suet
- Adds fat that makes the pastry rich and tender.
- Cooking apples
- Provide the filling, softening during cooking to form the pudding's body.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the tart apples to taste.
The step that matters
Seal the edges of the basin. A tight seal keeps steam inside during cooking. If the edges leak, the filling can dry out or cook unevenly, and the pastry may not set properly.
Swap the lemon
The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, apple, sugar):
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, apple, 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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