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Dessert

Bread and Butter Apple Pudding

A baked apple pudding with buttered stale bread, sugar, vanilla, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Bread and Butter Apple Pudding

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. Cover the bottom of a shallow, well-buttered pudding dish with apple sauce.

  2. Butter slices of stale bread and cut them into diamond-shaped pieces.

  3. Place the bread pieces buttered side up over the apple sauce, as close together as possible.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle with sugar and a few drops of vanilla.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot with 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Stale bread
Forms the crisp, golden top layer and soaks up some of the apple sauce's moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and promotes browning on the buttered bread surfaces.
Apple sauce
Provides moist, fruity base layer that softens while the pudding bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Cream
Adds richness and cooling contrast to the hot pudding when served.

The step that matters

Place the bread pieces buttered side up, as close together as possible. Close placement leaves little exposed apple sauce, so the bread covers the base evenly and browns into a uniform top. Gaps would let the sauce dry or scorch unevenly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

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

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