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Dessert

Charlie's Apple Pudding

A layered apple and bread crumb pudding baked slowly with butter, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Charlie's Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Butter a pudding dish well.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer an inch deep of chopped apples in the dish.

  2. Strew sugar and spice over the apples, adding a few bits of butter.

  3. Add another inch deep layer of bread crumbs or rolled crackers.

  4. Repeat the layers with apples, sugar, spice, and more bread crumbs or crackers.

  5. Continue layering until the dish is full, pressing down firmly with a plate.

  6. Bake for six hours.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Apples
Provide the fruit bulk and moisture that softens and flavors the pudding as it bakes.
Bread crumbs or rolled crackers
Soak up the juices and apple flavor, giving the pudding its body and soft texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the top brown lightly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples caramelize slightly during the long bake.

The step that matters

Pressing the layers down firmly with a plate. Firm pressing packs the bread and apple layers together so the pudding sets into a cohesive slice rather than a loose, watery mass during the long, slow bake.

Swap the apple

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

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

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