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Dessert

Apple and Brown-bread Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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. Mix the brown bread crumbs and chopped apples in a bowl.

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

  3. Grease molds with butter and fill them with the mixture.

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 bulk of the pudding and absorb moisture from the milk and egg.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the mixture so it holds its shape after cooking.
Apples
Add moisture and a fresh, tart fruitiness that balances the sweet raisins.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil in a pot for about 2 hours. Steady, gentle boiling cooks the egg and starch through evenly. Letting the water drop below a simmer can leave the centre dense or undercooked, while a hard boil can push water into the molds and make the pudding watery.

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.

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