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Dessert

Batter Fruit Pudding

A baked fruit pudding made with apples or plums, flour, eggs, sugar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Batter Fruit Pudding

Why it works: Apple and milk 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Butter a 1½ pint basin thickly.

  2. Fill it nearly to the brim with pared, cored, and quartered apples or plums.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and gradually mix them with the milk.

  2. Stir in the flour carefully, beating well.

  3. Pour the batter over the fruit.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie a well‑floured cloth tightly over the basin.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

  3. Turn it into a hot dish when done and serve immediately.

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. Apple + milktop 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the pudding its set structure as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding body so it holds together when turned out.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it cooks into a soft, tender pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the batter and the fruit.
Apples or plums
Provide the main fruit flavour and moisture that cooks into the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth tightly over the basin. A tight, well-floured cloth seals the basin so steam cooks the pudding evenly and the cloth does not stick to the surface. A loose cover lets water seep in and makes the pudding soggy.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

More fruit pudding recipes

Steamed 91Boiled 17Cold 14English 14Baked 12Tapioca 11 See all 210 →

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