Name: Brown Betty
Ingredients: 3 cooking apples, sliced; 1 cup bread crumbs; ½ cup sugar; 1 egg-sized piece of butter

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 ↓

Brown Betty

Ingredients

3 cooking apples, sliced
1 cup bread crumbs
½ cup sugar
1 egg-sized piece of butter

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

Grease a pudding dish.
Layer sliced apples in the dish.
Add a layer of bread crumbs and sprinkle with sugar.
Dot with small bits of butter.
Repeat layers, finishing with bread crumbs on top.

Bake and serve

Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.
Serve warm, with or without cream.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,790 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooking apples: Provide the fruit base that softens and becomes tender as the dish bakes.
Bread crumbs: Form the layers that soak up apple juices and bake to a golden, crisp-topped texture.
Sugar: Sweetens the dish and helps the apples and crumbs brown as they bake.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, helping the top crumbs brown and the dish taste rounded.