Skip to main content
Dessert

Brown Betty

A baked apple pudding with breadcrumbs, sugar, butter, and spices, finished with a brown sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Brown Betty

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Butter a large pudding dish.

Layer and season

  1. Layer thinly sliced sour apples and bread crumbs alternately in the dish.

  2. Season each layer with granulated sugar, bits of butter, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

  3. Cover the top with plenty of crumbs and dot with more butter.

  4. Make a syrup by combining dark-brown sugar and water; pour it around the sides of the dish, avoiding the crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve with sweet sauce or sweet cream.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour apples
Provide the tart fruit that softens and fills the dessert with flavor.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and butter, forming a soft layered structure under a browned top.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples caramelize slightly as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the crumbs brown on top.
Dark-brown sugar
Dissolves into the syrup to sweeten and moisten the crumbs as they bake.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup around the sides. Pouring it over the crumbs can make the top soggy, so it is poured around the edges to sink down and moisten the layers below while the top stays crisp.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, butter, cinnamon, clove, allspice. 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 brown betty recipes

Apple Pudding 8Pudding 6Apple 3Banana 3 See all 78 →

You might also like

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