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Dessert

Apple Pudding Boiled

A boiled pudding made with suet or butter, flour, apples, and optional sugar, cloves, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apple Pudding Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Chop the beef suet very fine.

  2. On a clean surface, mix the suet (or butter, lard, or dripping), flour, and salt with your hands.

  3. Make a well in the center, add the egg, and mix with your finger.

  4. Gradually add water to form a stiff paste.

  5. Roll out the dough two or three times with a rolling pin until large enough to hold the apples.

Fill and cook

  1. Butter a basin and place the dough inside.

  2. Stew the apples in a pan with ⅓ cup of water until soft.

  3. Fill the dough with the stewed apples and optionally add sugar, cloves, and lemon peel.

  4. Cover and boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or steam for 1 hour.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 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

Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and rich while it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough so it holds its shape around the apples.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Apples
Provide the moist, tender filling that cooks down inside the pudding.

The step that matters

Gradually add water to form a stiff paste. Adding water slowly lets the flour absorb it evenly. Too much water at once makes a sticky dough that is hard to roll and can toughen when cooked.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, egg, apple, sugar, lemon. 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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