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 dough
In a bowl, mix the flour and salt with your hands.
Make a well in the center and add the egg.
Stir the egg with your finger and gradually add water to form a stiff paste.
Roll out the dough two or three times with a rolling pin until large enough for the apples.
Butter a basin and place the rolled dough inside.
Fill and cook
Stew the apples in a pan with ⅓ cup of water until soft.
Fill the dough with the stewed apples and sweeten with sugar and optional spices.
Cover and boil for 1 hour or until cooked through.
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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Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,774 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,150 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,671 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the stiff dough that wraps and holds the filling.
- Egg
- Binds the flour and water into a dough with more structure.
- Apples
- Provide the soft, moist filling that cooks down with the sugar.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the stewed apple filling.
The step that matters
Forming the stiff paste. Adding water gradually keeps the dough stiff enough to roll and hold its shape. Too much water at once makes it sticky and hard to handle, while too little leaves it crumbly and prone to cracking when rolled.
Swap the clove
The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, apple, sugar, lemon):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Turmericfits better
- Clovethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, apple, sugar, lemon. 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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