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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A traditional British dessert made with suet or butter, flour, salt, egg, apples, sugar, cloves, and water, baked in a cloth or basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Apple Pudding

Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pastry

  1. Chop the beef suet very fine or use butter, lard, or dripping.

  2. On a flat surface, mix the suet (or alternative) with flour and salt using your hands.

  3. Make a hole in the mixture, add the egg, and gradually stir in water to form a stiff paste.

  4. Roll out the paste on a floured surface until large enough to hold the apples.

Prepare the basin

  1. If boiling in a pudding cloth, soak and flour the cloth; otherwise, butter a basin.

Stew and boil

  1. For quicker cooking, stew the apples with sugar, cloves, and water before adding them to the pudding.

  2. Boil the pudding for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 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

Beef suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the crust tender and moist as it boils.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the paste together and gives the pudding its body.
Egg
Binds the paste and adds structure and richness to the crust.
Apples
Supply the main filling, with moisture and tartness that balance the sweetness.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the apples caramelise in their juices.

The step that matters

Forming the stiff paste. Water must be added gradually so the flour hydrates evenly. Too much liquid at once makes the paste sticky and weak, while too little leaves a dry, crumbly crust that will not hold the apples.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, egg, apple, sugar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, egg, apple, 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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