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Dessert

Batter Fruit Pudding

A steamed apple pudding made by pouring a batter of flour, eggs, and milk over boiling apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Batter Fruit Pudding

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Batter Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a basin that holds 1½ pints and fill it nearly to the brim with boiling apples.

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, eggs, and milk to create a batter.

  3. Pour the batter over the apples in the basin.

Cook and serve

  1. Tie a buttered and floured cloth over the basin.

  2. Boil the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. Turn the pudding out onto a hot dish and sprinkle sugar over it.

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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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

Flour
Forms the batter that sets around the apples as the pudding cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, tender pudding.
Milk
Loosens the batter and adds moisture to the finished pudding.
Apples
Provide the fruit body and moisture that the batter cooks around.
Butter
Greases the basin so the pudding releases cleanly and adds richness.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes. The pudding is cooked by steam and boiling water, so the cloth must stay tied securely and the water must keep boiling. Lost water or a loose cover lets the batter dry or cook unevenly, and the pudding may turn out heavy or underdone in the centre.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, milk, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, milk, 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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