Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Pudding

A baked dish of sliced apples layered with sugar, butter, nutmeg, bread crumbs, and water.

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

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Apple 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).

Assemble

  1. Layer sliced apples in a baking dish and season with sugar, butter, and nutmeg.

  2. Add a layer of bread crumbs on top of the apples.

  3. Pour 1 cup of water over the layers.

  4. Finish with another layer of apples on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until the apples are tender.

  2. Serve with sauce, or 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.

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. Butter + breadtop 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. Nutmeg + breadtop 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

Sliced apples
Form the main body of the pudding and soften into a tender filling as they bake.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices and butter, helping the layers hold together as a soft pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the apples brown lightly.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them caramelise at the edges.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

Baked 128Boiled 64Steamed 30Sago 26Swiss 24Boston 17 See all 461 →

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipes