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Dessert

Batter Fruit Pudding

A pudding made by baking apples in a batter of flour, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Batter Fruit Pudding

Why it works: Milk and apple 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 ↓

Batter Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a basin that holds 1½ pints.

  2. Fill it nearly to the brim with the prepared apples.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, eggs, and milk to create a batter.

  2. Pour the batter over the apples in the basin.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie a buttered and floured cloth over the basin.

  2. Boil the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. Turn the pudding onto a hot dish and sprinkle sugar over it.

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. Milk + appletop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Flour
Forms the starch structure that sets the batter around the apples as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm as the pudding cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it cooks into a soft pudding.
Apples
Provide the fruit and moisture that flavour the pudding as it steams.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth over the basin. The cloth must be buttered and floured so the pudding does not stick to it. Keeping it snug and sealed lets steam cook the pudding evenly during the long boil.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, 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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