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Dessert

Apple, Currant, Cherry, or Other Fresh Fruit Pudding

A suet-based pudding filled with apples or other fruit, baked in boiling water and served with butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Apple, Currant, Cherry, or Other Fresh Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste and cloth

  1. Make a paste with suet or butter and flour.

  2. Lay a well-floured cloth in a basin.

  3. Dip the cloth in hot water. Wring it dry and shake it out.

  4. Roll the paste thin.

Fill and wrap

  1. Press the paste evenly into the basin on the cloth.

  2. Fill the basin with pared, cored, and quartered apples or other fruit.

  3. Moisten the edges of the paste. Press the edges together and fold the edges over.

  4. Gather the ends of the cloth. Tie the cloth firmly close to the pudding.

Boil and serve

  1. Drop the pudding into plenty of fast boiling water.

  2. Lift the pudding out using a strong fork in the corner of the cloth.

  3. Turn the pudding gently into a serving dish.

  4. Cut a small round or square from the top immediately. Serve without delay, accompanied by sugar and a small slice of fresh butter.

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 + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Suet or butter
Provides fat that makes the paste short and tender as it steams.
Flour
Forms the paste structure that holds the fruit and keeps the pudding together.
Apples
Supply the fruit filling and moisture that steams inside the pastry.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth firmly close to the pudding. A loose cloth lets water seep in during boiling, soaking the paste and diluting the filling. A snug, well-floured cloth keeps the pudding sealed and shaped as it steams.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, apple, sugar, nutmeg, apricot, wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, apple, sugar, nutmeg, apricot, 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.

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