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Dessert

Apple Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with sliced apples, stale bread, butter, sugar, lemon rind, and cinnamon.

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 ↓

Apple Bread and Butter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Core, pare, and halve the apples.

  2. Cut the stale bread into rounds the size of the apple halves.

Assemble

  1. Butter each slice of bread and place an apple half on top.

  2. Sprinkle the apples with sugar mixed with grated lemon rind and cinnamon.

  3. Add a small dab of butter on top of each apple.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.

  2. Add more butter when the apples are halfway done.

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

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

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Cooking apples
Provide the main fruit, softening as they bake and releasing sweet juices into the pudding.
Stale bread
Forms the base and soaks up butter and juices, giving the pudding its body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread and apples brown as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apple surfaces caramelise and brown in the oven.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that complements the sweetness of the apples.

The step that matters

Add more butter when the apples are halfway done. Adding butter partway through replenishes fat on the drying surface, supporting browning and keeping the bread from becoming dry at the edges.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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