Name: Apple Pudding
Ingredients: bread crumbs; apples, chopped fine; sugar; nutmeg; butter; 1 cup boiling water; cream (for serving)

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

In a pudding dish, layer bread crumbs and chopped apples alternately.
Sprinkle sugar and nutmeg over the layers, then add several pieces of butter.
Pour 1 cup of boiling water over the mixture.

Cook and serve

Cook until the apples are done.
Serve with cream and additional sugar.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs: Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the liquid and butter as it cooks.
Apples: Soften during cooking and provide moisture and fruity flavor to the pudding.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the apples and crumbs take on color and flavor as they cook.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the crumbs and apples.

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Coconutfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, nutmeg, butter, 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.