Skip to main content
Dessert

Delhi Pudding

A steamed apple pudding made with suet, sugar, currants, lemon peel, and nutmeg.

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

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Delhi Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Core and slice the apples.

  2. Combine the apples, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon peel in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until soft.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Make a suet paste and roll it out to a proper thickness.

  2. Spread the cooked apples over the paste and sprinkle with currants.

  3. Roll the pudding up, sealing the ends tightly.

Cook

  1. Steam or boil the pudding 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.

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

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main body and moisture of the filling as they soften during cooking.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the paste tender and moist during steaming.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple filling and helps it cook to a soft, flavourful texture.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the pudding.
Flour
Forms the structure of the suet paste that wraps the filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the roll. If the ends are not sealed tightly, steam and filling can escape during cooking, and the pudding may turn soggy or lose its shape.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, flour, lemon, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes