Skip to main content
Dessert

Crumb Pudding

A baked apple dessert with a crumb topping made from bread crumbs, sugar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,790 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Crumb Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Mix the bread crumbs, salt, and 3 ounces of sugar well together.

  2. Arrange the apples in close layers in a deep pie dish that holds about 1½ pints.

Assemble

  1. Strew the remaining 4 ounces of sugar, lemon rind, and juice among the apples.

  2. Sprinkle the bread crumbs evenly over the fruit, pressing them gently down.

  3. Sift powdered sugar over the top.

  4. Wipe the edge of the dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 45 minutes.

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 + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and apple 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

Bread crumbs
Form a soft, absorbent topping that soaks up juices and bakes to a crisp, golden crust.
Baking apples
Provide the fruit base, softening as they bake while holding some shape and tartness.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness of the apples and sugar.

The step that matters

Pressing the crumbs down gently. Pressing the bread crumbs lightly over the fruit keeps them in contact with the juices so they soak up moisture and brown evenly. Pressing too hard would compact them into a dense layer that bakes unevenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, apple):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, apple. 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.

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipes