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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A boiled apple pudding made with a dough of flour, suet, and spices, filled with apples and simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Apple Pudding

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Make a paste with flour, suet or marrow, salt, and enough water to form a dough.

  2. Knead the dough and roll it out thin.

Fill and boil

  1. Line a bowl or basin with the dough.

  2. Fill it with the prepared apples, lemon peel, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  3. Cover with a thin layer of dough, tie it up in a cloth, and boil for 2 hours.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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 dough's structure, giving the pastry enough body to hold the filling.
Beef suet or marrow
Adds fat that makes the dough rich and tender as it cooks.
Baking apples
Provide the main filling, softening during the boil while holding their shape.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that complements the sweetness of the apples.

The step that matters

Tying up the cloth for the boil. The cloth must be tied snugly so the pudding keeps its shape and water cannot seep into the filling during the long boil.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, lemon, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, lemon, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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