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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A baked apple dessert with pastry, butter, cinnamon, sugar, and whiskey.

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

Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Replace half of the suet with an egg-sized lump of butter.

  2. Mix the salt with the flour by rubbing it through your hands.

  3. Add water to form a dough and refrigerate until the next day.

  4. Roll out the dough.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Grease a bowl and line it with the pastry, allowing it to hang over the sides.

  2. Layer the sliced apples in the bowl, adding bits of butter, cinnamon, and sugar between layers until the bowl is full.

  3. Pour the whiskey over the apples.

  4. Cover with a layer of pastry and fold the overhanging pastry over the top without pressing it down.

Steam and serve

  1. Tie a cloth over the bowl and steam for three hours, ensuring the water remains boiling.

  2. Serve with a hard or hot sauce flavored with whiskey.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Suet
Adds richness and a tender, crumbly texture to the pastry.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that encloses the filling.
Apples
Provide the main filling, adding moisture, tartness and body as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the pastry and to the layers of apples.
Whiskey
Adds aroma and flavor to the apples and the sauce.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling during steaming. Steaming relies on a steady supply of boiling water to cook the pudding evenly over the full three hours. If the water drops below a boil, the pastry can turn heavy and the apples may cook unevenly.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, cinnamon, 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.

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