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Dessert

Apple, Currant, Cherry, or Other Fresh Fruit Pudding

A pudding made from flour, suet or butter, and fresh fruit, boiled and served with sugar and optional butter, nutmeg, lemon, jam, or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Apple, Currant, Cherry, or Other Fresh Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Make a paste with flour and suet or butter.

  2. Lay a well-floured cloth into a basin, dip it in hot water, wring it dry, and shake it out.

  3. Roll the paste thin and press it evenly into the basin on the cloth.

  4. Fill the basin with the prepared apples or other fruit.

  5. Moisten the edges of the paste, press them together, and fold them over.

  6. 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 in the corner of the cloth.

  3. Turn it gently into a 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 if desired.

  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. Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 paste that wraps the fruit and holds its shape while boiling.
Suet or butter
Adds fat that makes the paste tender and rich rather than tough.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling, with moisture and tartness that soften as they cook.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth firmly and keep the water boiling. A loose cloth lets water soak into the paste, and a weak boil cools the pudding, so the paste turns heavy and soggy instead of cooked through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, apple, sugar, lemon, apricot, wine. 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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