Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made with apples, bread crumbs, beef suet, and sweet milk, finished with a hard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Apple Bread Pudding

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. 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.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  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

Sour apples
Provide tart flavor and moisture that keeps the pudding from tasting flat.
Dried bread
Forms the crumb structure that soaks up milk and holds the pudding together.
Beef suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and helps the pudding stay moist.
Sweet milk
Supplies the liquid that softens the bread and sets into a custard-like body.

The step that matters

Pour in the sweet milk and bake until nicely browned. The bread must absorb the milk before baking so the pudding sets evenly rather than staying soggy or dry. Browning comes from the sugars and proteins in the milk reacting in the oven, so color is a useful sign of doneness.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipes