Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple and Brown-bread Pudding

A pudding made with brown bread crumbs, apples, suet, raisins, egg, flour, salt, and milk, baked and served with lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple and Brown-bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the brown bread crumbs and chopped apples.

  2. Add the finely chopped suet, raisins, egg, flour, salt, and milk; mix well.

  3. Grease molds with butter and pour the mixture into them.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil in a pot for about 2 hours.

  2. Serve with lemon-flavored 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brown bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the milk and egg to hold its shape.
Apples
Add moisture and a soft, fruity sweetness as they cook down.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture so it sets firm when cooked.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Boil in a pot for about 2 hours. Steaming or boiling gently and steadily cooks the egg and starch through without drying or toughening the pudding. Too much heat or uneven water level can make the texture rubbery or leave the center underdone.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, apple, raisin, egg, flour, milk, butter. 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 PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes