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Dessert

March Pudding

A baked dessert made with dried apples, molasses, flour, butter, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

March Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash and soak the dried apples overnight.

  2. Cut the apples finely and combine with the other ingredients.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake immediately at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Serve hot with a sauce made from ½ cup butter and 1 cup sugar, beaten smooth and flavored.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 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

Dried apples
Adds fruit body, moisture and natural sweetness to the pudding.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and dark color, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Bake immediately. Baking soda starts releasing gas as soon as it meets the acidic molasses and other wet ingredients. If the batter waits, much of that gas escapes before baking, so the pudding rises less and may turn out dense.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, molasses, flour, butter, clove, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, molasses, flour, butter, clove, cinnamon. 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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