Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Apple Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Weigh and prepare the apples by peeling, coring, and slicing them into thin bits.
Weigh the brown sugar.
Make a suet paste, rolling it thinner at the edges than in the middle, large enough to fit a greased 2-quart basin.
Assemble and boil
Layer the apples and sugar alternately in the basin.
Wet the edges of the paste and fold it over the filling tightly.
Dredge the top with flour and cover with a pudding cloth.
Boil for 3 hours.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,790 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,706 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
- Apples
- Provide the bulk of the filling and a tart fruit flavor as they soften.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth as it dissolves into the apple juices.
- Suet
- Adds richness and fat to the paste, keeping it tender during long steaming.
The step that matters
Sealing the paste tightly. A loose seal lets steam and boiling water into the basin, which can make the pudding soggy and wash out the sugar. Wetting the edges helps them stick together so the filling stays enclosed while it cooks.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, bread, butter):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, bread, 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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