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Dessert

Honey-batter Pudding

A baked apple pudding made with honey, flour, currants, suet, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and honey work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 569 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Honey-batter Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Peel, core, and chop the apples.

  2. Clean the currants and mix them with the chopped apples.

Layer and make the batter

  1. Place half of the fruit mixture in a greased pie dish and add half of the honey.

  2. Add the remaining fruit and then the rest of the honey.

  3. Beat the egg thoroughly and mix it with the milk and flour to form a smooth batter.

  4. Add the finely chopped suet to the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter over the fruit and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 hour and 15 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.

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 + honeytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Honey + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Keswick apples
Provide the main fruit body and tartness that balances the honey's sweetness.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture to the fruit layers as it softens during baking.
Flour
Gives the batter structure so it sets into a light, cohesive pudding as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firm as the pudding bakes.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding tender and moist.
Milk
Moistens the flour and egg into a smooth batter that bakes into a soft crumb.

The step that matters

Pour the batter over the fruit and bake. The batter must be smooth and fully mixed before pouring, since lumps of flour or unmixed egg bake unevenly. Baking long enough lets the egg and flour set so the pudding holds together when served.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, honey, flour, egg, milk):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, honey, flour, egg, milk. 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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