Name: Swiss Pudding
Ingredients: 1 lb apples; 3 oz sugar; 6 oz breadcrumbs; 1 oz butter; 3 oz suet; 2 tablespoons water

Why it works: Apple and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Swiss Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the apples

Peel, core, and cook the apples in a pan with sugar and water until they can be beaten to a pulp.

Layer and bake

Chop the suet finely and mix it with the breadcrumbs.
Grease a pie dish and line it with the suet and breadcrumb mixture.
Add a layer of apple, then a layer of crumbs, and repeat the layers.
Dot the top with small pieces of butter and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 30 minutes.
Turn out and serve with custard.

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.

Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they 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

Apples: Break down into a pulp to form the soft, moist filling.
Breadcrumbs: Absorb moisture and give the pudding its body between the apple layers.
Suet: Adds fat that enriches the crumb layers and keeps them moist as they cook.
Butter: Melts over the top during baking, adding richness and light browning.
Sugar: Sweetens the apples and balances their tartness.