Skip to main content
Dessert

Miscellaneous Dessert Dishes

A baked dish of buttered bread and sliced apples sweetened with sugar and cinnamon, topped with a final bread layer.

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

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 ↓

Miscellaneous Dessert Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble the dish

  1. Layer buttered bread slices in the bottom of a deep dish.

  2. Add a layer of sliced apples, sprinkling with sugar and cinnamon.

  3. Repeat layers of bread and apples until the dish is filled, finishing with a layer of bread on top.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. If the bread browns too quickly, cover with a plate until the apples are cooked.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Bread + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,705 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

Bread
Forms the layers and soaks up juices as the dish bakes.
Apples
Supply moisture and tartness, softening into the filling as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps the surface brown and caramelize.
Cinnamon
Adds a warm aroma to the apples.

The step that matters

Watching the browning. Buttered bread and sugar brown quickly in the oven, so the top can scorch before the apples in the middle are cooked. Covering the dish shields the surface from direct heat while the apples soften through.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, cinnamon, cream. 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.

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes