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Dessert

Steamed Apple Pudding

A steamed dessert made with sliced apples, milk, butter, baking powder, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

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

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

  3. Steam the apples until nearly tender.

Add the topping and steam

  1. Mix the remaining ingredients like a tea biscuit dough.

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

Serve

  1. Turn the dish 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. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Sour apples
Provide the fruit base and tartness, and soften into a moist layer while steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the moist dough, helping the topping rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour-based dough and adds moisture and richness to the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and keeps the baking dish from sticking.

The step that matters

Cover the dish tightly while steaming. The lid traps steam so the dough cooks through and rises evenly. If steam escapes, the topping can turn dense and under-cooked in the centre.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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