Skip to main content
Dessert

Brown Betty Pudding

A baked apple dessert with bread crumbs and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 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. Chop the apples finely.

  2. Butter a quart dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the chopped apples in the dish, sprinkle with sugar, nutmeg or cinnamon, and small bits of butter.

  2. Cover with a layer of bread crumbs, then add more apples.

  3. Repeat the layering until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of crumbs on top.

  4. If the apples are not very juicy, add a few spoonfuls of water.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about an hour, or until the apples are soft.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with sugar and 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples
Provide the main body and soft, tangy fruit that cooks down into the filling.
Bread crumbs
Soak up apple juices and butter, giving the dish a soft, layered texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the crumbs brown on top in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart apples and helps them caramelize slightly as they bake.

The step that matters

Checking that the apples are soft. Apples vary in juiciness and firmness. Adding water only if they are dry prevents scorching, and baking until the apples are fully tender ensures the fruit cooks through rather than staying firm inside the crumb layers.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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

More brown betty recipes

Apple Pudding 8Pudding 6Apple 3Banana 3 See all 78 →

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes