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Dessert

Apple Bread Pudding

A baked pudding made with apples, bread crumbs, butter, beef suet, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Apple Bread Pudding

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 Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Dry the bread in the oven until crisp, then roll it into crumbs.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a deep dish and layer the crumbs and chopped apples alternately.

  2. Sprinkle spice and add the chopped beef suet.

  3. Pour in the sweet milk and bake until nicely browned.

Serve

  1. Serve with hard 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.

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.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide tartness and moisture that keep the pudding from tasting flat or heavy.
Dried bread
Absorbs the milk and sets into a soft, custardy structure as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Beef suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and gives a tender crumb.
Sweet milk
Soaks into the bread and sets with the eggless crumb, providing moisture and structure.

The step that matters

Pour in the sweet milk and bake until nicely browned. The bread must soak up the milk evenly before baking, or dry pockets remain. Baking until browned sets the crumbs and develops flavour through browning, so judging colour matters more than a fixed time.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, beef, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, beef, milk. 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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