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Dessert

Brown Betty with Ambrosia Sauce

A baked apple and raisin dessert topped with a sweet, whipped apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Brown Betty with Ambrosia Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the layers

  1. Break stale bread into fine pieces and place in a well buttered pan.

  2. Sprinkle generously with sugar and cinnamon.

  3. Add a layer of sliced apples, sprinkling with more sugar and cinnamon, and adding flecks of butter and a few raisins.

  4. Continue layering until the pan is full.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix 2 cups of cold water with the beaten yolks of 2 eggs and pour over the layers.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until dark brown.

  3. For the Ambrosia Sauce, beat the egg whites to a stiff froth with ½ cup of granulated sugar.

  4. Fold in the grated apple and flavor with ½ teaspoon of vanilla or juice of orange and lemon.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  5. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Dry, absorbent pieces soak up the custard and hold the layers together while baking.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the custard to help it set, and whipped whites give the Ambrosia Sauce its airy structure.
Apples
Sliced apples add moisture and tartness that soften and balance the sweet layers as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the layers and helps the top brown as it caramelises in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the bread brown on its surface.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites trap air when beaten with sugar, forming a stable foam. If they are underbeaten or deflated before folding in the grated apple, the sauce will be runny rather than light.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, cinnamon, butter, raisin, egg, vanilla. 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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