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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A boiled apple pudding made with apples, wheatmeal, butter, cinnamon, and sugar.

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

Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare, core, and cut the apples.

  2. Make a paste with the wheatmeal, butter, and a little cold water.

  3. Roll out the paste and line a pudding basin with most of it.

Fill and seal

  1. Place the apples in the basin and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, adjusting sugar for sour apples.

  2. Cover the apples with the remaining paste and press the edges together.

Boil

  1. Tie a cloth over the basin and boil the pudding in a saucepan of boiling water for 2½ to 3 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.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Apples
Provide the main filling and moisture that steams inside the pastry.
Allinson fine wheatmeal
Forms the paste that encloses the filling and holds its shape while boiling.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the paste tender and rich.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and can be adjusted to balance sour fruit.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the apple filling.

The step that matters

Press the edges of the paste together. A tight seal keeps water out of the pudding during the long boil and keeps the apple juices and steam inside, so the filling stays moist rather than soggy or leaking.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar, butter. 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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