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Dessert

Apple Puddings

A boiled apple pudding made with suet, flour, and apples, spiced with cloves and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apple Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Peel, quarter, and core the apples.

  2. Mix suet, flour, and salt with water to form a stiff paste.

  3. Line a buttered pudding basin with the paste.

Fill and boil

  1. Place the apples in the basin with cloves, lemon peel, sugar, and water.

  2. Moisten the edge of the paste and cover with another layer of paste, sealing it well.

  3. Tie a pudding cloth over the basin and boil in water for two hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the cloth and loosen the pudding with a knife.

  2. Invert onto a flat dish and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 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. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and its fruity, tender body as they soften.
Suet
Adds fat that makes the paste rich and tender while it steams.
Flour
Forms the stiff paste that wraps and holds the pudding together.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple filling and adds flavour to the juices.

The step that matters

Sealing the paste cover. If the edge is not moistened and pressed firmly, the top layer can separate during boiling, letting water seep into the filling and making the pudding soggy or leaky.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, flour, clove, 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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