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Dessert

Apple, Currant, Cherry, or Other Fresh Fruit Pudding

A suet-based pudding filled with apples, currants, cherries or other fresh fruit, served with 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

  1. Make a paste with suet or butter as for a beef‑steak pudding.

  2. Lay a well‑floured cloth into a basin, dip it in hot water, wring it dry, and shake it out.

  3. Roll the paste thin and press it evenly into the basin on the cloth.

Fill and wrap

  1. Fill the basin with prepared apples or other fruit.

  2. Moisten the edges of the paste, press them together, and fold them over.

  3. Gather the ends of the cloth and tie it firmly close to the pudding.

Boil and serve

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

  2. When done, lift it out using a strong fork twisted into the corner of the cloth.

  3. Turn it gently into the serving dish and cut a small round or square from the top immediately.

  4. Serve without delay, accompanied by pounded sugar and good Lisbon sugar.

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
Forms the rich, short paste that surrounds the fruit and gives the pudding its tenderness.
Flour
Dusts the cloth and helps the paste release cleanly, forming the outer casing.
Apples
Supply the fruit filling, adding moisture and a tart, sweet flavour as they cook.
Pounded sugar
Adds sweetness to the pudding and is served alongside it.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth firmly and boil in fast, plenty of water. A loose cloth lets water soak into the paste and dilute the filling, while a steady rolling boil cooks the suet crust through and keeps the pudding from turning soggy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, apple, sugar, lemon, 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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