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Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A boiled pudding made with apples, pastry cloth, sugar, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak a pastry cloth in hot water, wring it dry, and shake it out.

  2. Roll the pastry thin and press it evenly into the basin on the cloth.

  3. Fill the basin with prepared apples or any other fruit.

  4. Moisten the edges of the pastry, press them together, and fold them over.

  5. 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.

  5. Add a small slice of fresh butter and finely grated nutmeg for improvement.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main filling, becoming soft and moist as the pudding boils.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a silky moisture when added to the hot pudding.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the pudding and the fruit served alongside it.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth firmly. A loose cloth lets water seep into the pudding while it boils, making the pastry soggy and the filling watery. Firm tying keeps the pudding compact so it holds its shape and cooks evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, butter, nutmeg. 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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