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Dessert

Apple Pudding

A boiled apple pudding made with suet, lime rinds, sugar, and water, cooked in a greased cup.

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

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease a breakfast cup with suet or dripping.

  2. Line the cup with a crust made from suet or dripping.

  3. Add the apple pieces, lime rinds, sugar, and cold water to the cup.

  4. Cover with a thick crust, pressing down the edges well.

  5. Flour a piece of cloth and tie it securely over the cup.

Cook and serve

  1. Plunge the cup into boiling water, ensuring it remains upright.

  2. Cook for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the cloth, run a knife around the edges, and turn out the pudding.

  4. Serve with butter or boiled custard.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Lime + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Apple + limetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Apples
Provide the main fruit filling and moisture that steams into the pudding.
Suet
Forms the crust and adds richness and fat that keeps the pastry tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples and lime.

The step that matters

Keeping the cup upright in boiling water. If the cup tips, water can enter the pudding and make the crust soggy. A cloth tied securely and a steady, upright position keep the steam gentle and the pudding intact during the long steaming.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Limethe original

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