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Dessert

Steamed Apple Pudding

A steamed dessert of sliced apples covered with a biscuit-like batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Steamed Apple Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Core, peel, and slice the apples.

  2. Place the apples in a buttered baking dish and sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Steam the apples until nearly tender.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the remaining ingredients like tea biscuit dough.

  2. Pour the mixture over the apples, cover, and steam for an additional 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn onto a hot plate so the apples are on top.

  2. Serve with sugar and cream or a sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Apples
Provide the fruit base, moisture and natural sweetness that flavour the pudding.
Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it reacts, helping the dough rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and gives it a richer flavour.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together and stays moist.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and balances their tartness.

The step that matters

Mix the dough lightly like tea biscuit dough. Overworking biscuit-style dough develops gluten, which makes the pudding tough and dense rather than tender. Mix only until the ingredients just come together so the baking powder can lift the dough during steaming.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, 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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