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Dessert

Batter Fruit Pudding

A fruit pudding made by pouring a batter of flour, eggs, and milk over boiled apples and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Batter Fruit Pudding

Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Batter Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Butter a basin that holds 1½ pints thickly.

  2. Fill the basin nearly to the brim with the prepared apples.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, eggs, and milk to make a batter.

  2. Pour the batter over the apples in the basin.

  3. Tie a buttered and floured cloth over the basin.

  4. Boil the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn the pudding out onto a hot dish and sprinkle sugar over it.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms the batter that binds and sets around the apples as the pudding cooks.
Eggs
Set the batter as they cook, giving the pudding structure and a firm, tender texture.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and helps it cook into a soft, set crumb.
Good boiling apples
Provide the fruit filling, softening during cooking to form the pudding's body.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth firmly and keep the pudding boiling. A loose cloth lets water seep in and makes the pudding soggy, while letting the water stop boiling slows cooking and leaves the batter underset. A buttered, floured cloth also keeps the pudding from sticking.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, 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.

More fruit pudding recipes

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