Skip to main content
Dessert

Swiss Pudding, Plain

A baked apple pudding with bread crumbs, butter, nutmeg, and lemon, served with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Swiss Pudding, Plain

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a pie dish and cover the bottom with a layer of bread crumbs.

Layer and bake

  1. Add a layer of sliced apples, sprinkle with nutmeg or lemon rind, and add moist sugar.

  2. Continue layering with bread crumbs and apples, finishing with bread crumbs on top.

  3. Dot the top with small pieces of butter.

  4. Pour water and lemon juice over the pudding.

  5. Bake for about 2 hours, until the surface is browned and apples are soft.

  6. Serve with powdered 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.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking apples
Soften during baking to form the moist, tender body of the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the juices and liquid to hold the layers together as a soft pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples caramelise and brown on the surface.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet apples and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Bake until the surface is browned and apples are soft. Apples must cook through to become tender while the bread crumbs brown on top. Underbaking leaves firm apples and a pale, wet surface, while the sugar and proteins in the crumbs brown only with sustained oven heat.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipes