Name: Apple Puddings in Skins
Ingredients: 1 pound apples, peeled, cored, and minced; 1 pound bread, grated, or the same quantity of pounded biscuits; ½ pound suet, minced; ½ pound brown sugar; ¼ pound cleaned currants; ½ grated nutmeg; 4 cloves, pounded; grated lemon peel, to taste; 4 tablespoons white wine

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Puddings in Skins

Ingredients

1 pound apples, peeled, cored, and minced
1 pound bread, grated, or the same quantity of pounded biscuits
½ pound suet, minced
½ pound brown sugar
¼ pound cleaned currants
½ grated nutmeg
4 cloves, pounded
grated lemon peel, to taste
4 tablespoons white wine

Directions

Make the filling

Mix the minced apples, grated bread or biscuits, minced suet, brown sugar, and currants in a bowl.
Add the grated nutmeg, pounded cloves, grated lemon peel, and white wine to the mixture.

Fill and cook

Half-fill the pudding skins with the mixture and prick them well.
Boil the filled skins for 15 minutes.
Boil the skins for a few minutes.
Brown the skins in a Dutch oven.

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.

Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,774 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide moisture and fruity flavour that cooks down into the filling.
Bread: Soaks up liquid and gives the filling body and a soft, light crumb.
Suet: Adds fat that melts during cooking, keeping the filling rich and moist.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and molasses flavour, and helps the filling brown.
White wine: Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet, rich filling.

The step that matters

Pricking the skins. Pricking lets steam escape while the filling cooks, so the skins do not swell and burst. Filling only half-full leaves room for the mixture to expand as it heats.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, bread, sugar, nutmeg, clove, lemon, white wine):

Figfits better
Orangefits better
Quincefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, bread, sugar, nutmeg, clove, lemon, white wine. 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.

Apple Bread Pudding21 recipes

Apple Pudding256 recipes

Lemon Cake228 recipes

Bread Pudding153 recipes

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Apple Puddings in Skins