Name: Batter Fruit Pudding
Ingredients: ½ cup flour; 2 large eggs or 3 small eggs; ½ pint milk; good boiling apples, pared, cored, and quartered; sugar for serving

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

Butter a basin that holds 1½ pints and fill it nearly to the brim with the prepared apples.
In a bowl, mix the flour, eggs, and milk to create a batter.
Pour the batter over the apples in the basin.
Tie a buttered and floured cloth over the basin.

Cook and serve

Boil the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Turn the pudding out onto a hot dish and sprinkle sugar over it before serving.

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.

Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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 sets around the apples as the pudding cooks.
Eggs: Bind the batter and help it set firm when cooked.
Milk: Adds moisture and helps the batter cook into a soft, tender crumb.
Good boiling apples: Provide the fruit and moisture that fill the pudding and soften as it cooks.