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Dessert

Boiled Apple Pudding

A boiled pudding made with suet crust, sliced apples, sugar, lemon peel, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a suet crust using 1 lb of flour and other ingredients in proportion.

  2. Butter a basin and line it with some of the crust.

Fill and wrap

  1. Pare, core, and slice the apples, then fill the basin with them.

  2. Add sugar, lemon peel, and lemon juice to the apples.

  3. Cover the filling with the remaining crust and pinch the edges together.

  4. Flour a cloth, place it over the pudding, tie it securely, and put it in boiling water.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for 1.5 to 2.5 hours, depending on the size of the pudding.

  2. Turn it out of the basin and serve immediately.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the suet crust that encloses the filling.
Suet crust
Provides a rich, tender pastry that steams around the apples as they cook.
Apples
Supply the bulk of the filling and moisture that softens as the pudding boils.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the apples and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the apples.

The step that matters

Securing the cloth and boiling. The cloth must be floured and tied tightly so the crust holds its shape, and the pudding must stay fully submerged in boiling water. Steady boiling cooks the crust through and the fruit evenly over the full time.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, lemon. 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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