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Dessert

Steamed Apple Pudding

A steamed apple pudding made with apples, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, shortening, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Steamed Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Wipe, quarter, core, pare, and slice the apples.

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

  3. Steam the apples until they are nearly tender.

Add the batter and steam

  1. Combine the remaining ingredients to form a batter.

  2. Pour the batter over the apples, cover, and steam for an additional 20 to 25 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar and cream or a sauce such as lemon, caramel, or brown sugar.

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 + 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Apples
Provide the fruit base that softens and sweetens under steam.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and adds flavor to the dish.
Flour
Gives the batter structure as it sets during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the topping rises and becomes light.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the batter and gives a softer crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture so the flour hydrates into a pourable batter.

The step that matters

Steaming the batter with the apples. Steam must stay steady and the lid kept on so the batter cooks through and rises evenly. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, which can leave the topping dense or wet in the middle.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, 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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