Skip to main content
Dessert

Batter Fruit Pudding

A baked apple pudding made with a batter of flour, eggs, and milk, served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Batter Fruit Pudding

Why it works: Apple and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Batter Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Butter a basin that holds 1½ pints thickly.

  2. Fill the basin nearly to the brim with the prepared apples.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, eggs, and milk to create a batter.

  2. Pour the batter over the apples in the basin.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie a buttered and floured cloth over the basin.

  2. Boil the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. Turn the pudding out onto a hot dish when done.

  4. Sprinkle sugar thickly over the pudding before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

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

Boiling apples
Form the main body of the pudding and soften into a fruit filling as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it sets into a firm, sliceable pudding around the fruit.
Eggs
Add structure and help the batter set as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it can coat the apples.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Boiling must stay steady and the basin must be sealed well so the batter cooks through and sets without becoming watery. Too little heat or a loose cloth lets water in and leaves the centre soggy.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

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

More fruit pudding recipes

Steamed 91Boiled 17Cold 14English 14Baked 12Tapioca 11 See all 210 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes