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Dessert

Steamed Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with apples, sugar, water, spices, and biscuit dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Steamed Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine apples, sugar, water, and cinnamon or nutmeg in a deep tin basin.

  2. Place the basin on the stove and heat until boiling.

  3. While the apples cook, prepare the biscuit dough and roll it to ½ inch thick.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the boiling apples with the rolled dough.

  2. Cover the pudding with a buttered pan and boil gently for 12 minutes.

  3. Remove the upper pan and place the lower pan on a serving dish.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Cinnamon + biscuittop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together312 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Apple + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Apples
Provide the fruit filling that softens and sweetens as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and adds body to the cooking liquid.
Biscuit dough
Forms the topping that cooks over the boiling apples as the pudding steams.

The step that matters

Covering the pudding and boiling gently. Once the dough is on, the water should only simmer gently. A hard boil can toss the dough and break up the topping, while gentle steam cooks the dough through.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, biscuit. 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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