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Dessert

Apple and Brown-bread Pudding

A pudding made from brown bread crumbs, apples, suet, raisins, egg, flour, milk, and butter, served with lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apple and Brown-bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix the brown bread crumbs and chopped apples in a bowl.

  2. Add the finely chopped suet, raisins, egg, flour, salt, and milk, then mix well.

Cook in molds

  1. Grease the molds with butter and pour the mixture into them.

  2. Boil in a pot for about 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with lemon-flavored 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brown bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and structure that soaks up the liquid and holds the pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the mixture and sets it firm as the proteins cook.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture so it holds its shape rather than turning watery.
Chopped apples
Add moisture and fruity sweetness that brightens the dense crumb.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and softens the mixture so it cooks evenly.

The step that matters

Boiling for about 2 hours. The egg sets slowly in gentle, steady heat. A rolling boil can make the pudding tough or dense and can push water into the molds, so keep the water at a steady simmer throughout.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, apple, raisin, egg, flour, milk, butter):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, apple, raisin, egg, flour, milk, butter. 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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