Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Apple Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pastry
Mix flour, chopped suet, and salt in a bowl.
Gradually add water to form a smooth paste.
Line a basin with the paste.
Fill and cook
Sweeten the quartered apples to taste and add lemon peel or cloves if desired.
Fill the lined basin with the sweetened apples.
Cover with more paste and seal the edges.
Steam or boil for about 1 hour until cooked through.
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.
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the structure of the suet paste that encloses the filling.
- Beef suet
- Adds fat that makes the paste rich and tender as it cooks.
- Cooking apples
- Provide the main filling, softening into a moist, tart-sweet fruit layer.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the tart apples to taste.
The step that matters
Sealing the edges. If the paste is not sealed well, steam and juices can escape or water can enter during steaming or boiling, leaving the filling soggy or the pudding poorly cooked. A firm seal keeps the pudding moist and held together.
Swap the lemon
The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, apple, sugar):
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, apple, 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.
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