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Boiled Apple Pudding

A boiled pudding made with apples, flour, suet, sugar, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crust

  1. Make a crust by mixing flour and suet or dripping.

  2. Line a basin with the crust.

Fill and boil

  1. Fill the basin with the prepared apples.

  2. Add lemon peel and sugar on top of the apples.

  3. Cover with another layer of crust and tie a cloth over it.

  4. Boil in water for 2 hours.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust that encloses the apples.
Suet or dripping
Adds fat that makes the crust tender and rich.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling and moisture that cooks into the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the apples.
Lemon peel
Adds bright aroma that balances the sweetness of the apples.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth firmly over the top. A loose cloth lets water seep into the pudding during the long boil, making the crust soggy. A snug, well-sealed cover keeps the filling moist and the crust intact while it steams.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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