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 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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Pare, core, and chop the apples.
Dry the bread in the oven until crisp, then roll it into crumbs.
Assemble and bake
Butter a deep dish and layer the crumbs and apples alternately.
Sprinkle with spice and add the chopped beef suet.
Pour in the sweet milk.
Bake until nicely browned.
Serve
Serve with hard sauce.
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.
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Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,598 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
-
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,655 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Apples
- Provide moisture and tart flavor that balances the sweetness of the pudding.
- Bread
- Forms the crumb structure that soaks up milk and holds the pudding together.
- Sweet milk
- Moistens the bread crumbs and sets into a custard-like texture as it bakes.
- Beef suet
- Adds fat that enriches the texture and helps the crumbs brown.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness and helps the dish brown at the surface.
The step that matters
Drying the bread crumbs. Bread that is only partly dried stays soggy and can make the pudding heavy. Drying it until crisp lets the crumbs absorb the milk evenly and hold their shape during baking.
“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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