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Dessert

Apple Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made with apples, bread crumbs, butter, suet, spices, and milk, served with hard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Apple Bread Pudding

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 ↓

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

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

  2. Sprinkle the spice and add the chopped beef suet.

  3. Pour the sweet milk over the layers.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until nicely browned, then 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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour apples
Provide tartness and moisture that soften into the pudding as it bakes.
Bread
Forms the crumb structure that soaks up the milk and sets as the pudding bakes.
Beef suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and helps keep the crumbs moist.
Sweet milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and apples, binding the layers as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top and dish surface brown.

The step that matters

Dry the bread until crisp. Bread that is only partly dried stays soft and gummy, so it cannot absorb the milk evenly and the pudding turns soggy rather than set.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Celeryfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

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