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Dessert

A Simple Susan

A layered apple dessert with bread crumbs, butter, sugar, and lemon‑nutmeg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,145 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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. Butter a pudding dish and cover the bottom with bread crumbs.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer minced apple on top, sprinkling lightly with salt and spices.

  2. Add more sugar, then more crumbs, followed by more apple, repeating layers.

  3. Finish with a final layer of crumbs.

  4. Bake for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat together butter and sugar with lemon juice and nutmeg.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Apple + buttertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,692 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  4. Bread + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,788 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Butter + saucetop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together15,317 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce share little aroma chemistry, yet 15,317 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Bread crumbs
Form the base and topping layers that soak up juices and bake into a golden, firm crust.
Apple
Provides the fruit filling, moisture and tartness that cook down between the crumb layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour in the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Figbetter flavor fit
  2. Peachbetter flavor fit
  3. Pearbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, apple, sugar, butter, sauce, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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