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Dessert

Batter Fruit Pudding

A pudding made by baking apples in a batter of flour, eggs, milk, and butter.

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 the basin

  1. Butter a basin that holds 1½ pints thickly.

  2. Fill the basin nearly to the brim with the boiling apples.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, eggs, and milk to make a batter.

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

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

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

Serve

  1. Turn the pudding out onto a plate 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set as it cooks into a firm pudding.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body as it sets.
Milk
Loosens the batter and adds moisture to the cooked pudding.
Butter
Greases the basin so the pudding releases cleanly and adds richness.
Boiling apples
Provide fruit flavour and moisture that soften during the long cooking.

The step that matters

Tie a buttered and floured cloth over the basin. The cloth must be sealed snugly so steam cannot escape and water cannot enter while the pudding boils. The butter and flour on the cloth keep it from sticking to the batter as the pudding rises and sets.

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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