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Dessert

Apple Bread Puddijn'g

A baked dessert of crumbled bread, apples, butter, beef suet, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 Bread Puddijn'g

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).

  2. Dry the bread in the oven until crisp, then roll it into crumbs.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a deep dish and layer the crumbs and chopped apples alternately.

  2. Sprinkle with spice and add the chopped beef suet.

  3. Pour in the sweet milk and bake until nicely browned.

Serve

  1. Serve with hard sauce.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour apples
Provide acidity and moisture, and a tart flavour that balances the sweet milk.
Bread
Forms the absorbent body of the pudding, soaking up milk to set into a soft crumb.
Beef suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and helps keep the pudding moist.
Sweet milk
Supplies the liquid that soaks the crumbs and sets during baking into a custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the top and dish surface brown.

The step that matters

Dry the bread until crisp. Bread that is still soft will turn gummy when soaked in milk. Thoroughly dried crumbs absorb the liquid evenly and keep a light, distinct texture rather than a dense paste.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, beef, milk. 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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