Name: A Common Apple Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pound all-purpose flour; 6 ounces finely minced beef suet; 1¼ pounds good boiling apples, peeled and cored; Juice and grated rind of 1 small lemon; ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg or cinnamon (optional); ½ pound butter (for richer pudding); 1-2 tablespoons orange or quince marmalade (for richer pudding)

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Common Apple Pudding

Ingredients

1 pound all-purpose flour
6 ounces finely minced beef suet
1¼ pounds good boiling apples, peeled and cored
Juice and grated rind of 1 small lemon
¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg or cinnamon (optional)
½ pound butter (for richer pudding)
1-2 tablespoons orange or quince marmalade (for richer pudding)

Directions

Make the pudding

Make a light crust by mixing flour and suet until crumbly.
Roll the dough thin and fill it with the apples.
Add lemon juice and rind, then tie the pudding in a cloth.

Boil

Boil for 1 hour and 20 minutes before Christmas, then 20-30 minutes longer after.

Richer version

For a richer pudding, use butter instead of suet and add marmalade.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,746 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 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

All-purpose flour: Forms the dough that wraps and holds the filling together.
Beef suet: Adds fat that makes the crust short and tender as it cooks.
Boiling apples: Provide moisture and tart flavour that fills the pudding.
Butter: In the richer version, replaces suet to add fat and a softer, richer texture.
Orange or quince marmalade: In the richer version, adds sweetness and a bright citrus or fruity flavour.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, apple, lemon, butter, orange):

Cinnamonfits better
Thymefits about as well
Nutmegthe original
Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, apple, lemon, butter, orange. 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.