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Dessert

Boiled Apple Pudding

A boiled pudding made with flour, suet, apples, spices, sugar, butter, and quince syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Make a paste with flour, suet, salt, and enough water to form a dough.

  2. Knead the dough well and roll it out thin.

Fill and boil

  1. Line a bowl or basin with the dough.

  2. Fill it with the prepared apples, lemon peel, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  3. Cover the top with a thin layer of dough and tie the basin with a cloth.

  4. Boil the pudding until well done.

Serve

  1. To serve, cut a piece from the top and mix the apples with sugar, butter, and quince syrup.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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 dough's structure, holding the pudding together while it boils.
Beef suet or marrow
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and rich as it cooks.
Baking apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, softening as they cook and releasing moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the apples, balancing their tartness.
Quince syrup
Adds fruity sweetness and aroma to the apple filling.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding until well done. The dough must cook through in a sealed, boiling cloth. Underdone dough stays gummy and doughy, while steady boiling sets the starch and softens the apples inside.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, lemon, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, 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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