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Dessert

Apple Puddings in Skins

A steamed apple pudding made with apples, bread or biscuits, suet, sugar, currants, spices, and wine, baked in skins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Puddings in Skins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the minced apples, grated bread or biscuits, minced suet, brown sugar, and currants.

  2. Add the grated nutmeg, pounded cloves, grated lemon peel, and white wine to the mixture.

Fill and boil

  1. Half fill the pudding skins with the mixture and prick them well.

  2. Boil the filled skins for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, boil them for a few minutes and then brown them in a Dutch oven.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

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

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide moisture and a fresh, tart-sweet body that softens during boiling.
Bread
Absorbs liquid and gives the filling its soft, crumbly structure.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the filling and keeps it tender as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the surface brown when finished.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bits throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Half filling the pudding skins and pricking them. The filling expands and gives off steam while boiling. Overfilling or skipping the pricks can let pressure build and split the skins, so leaving room and venting them keeps the pudding intact.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, bread, sugar, nutmeg, clove, lemon, white wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, bread, sugar, nutmeg, clove, lemon, white 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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