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Dessert

Bread and Butter Apple Pudding

A pudding made by layering buttered stale bread in apple sauce and baking, served with cream.

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 ↓

Bread and Butter Apple Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cover the bottom of a shallow baking dish with apple sauce.

  2. Cut stale bread into ⅓ inch slices, spread with softened butter, remove crusts, and cut into triangular pieces.

Assemble

  1. Arrange the bread closely over the apple sauce.

  2. Sprinkle generously with sugar and add a few drops of vanilla.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) and serve with cream.

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Stale bread
Forms the main structure and soaks up the custard-like moisture as it bakes.
Softened butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the bread brown at the edges.
Apple sauce
Provides moisture and fruity flavour that soaks into the bread layers.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top caramelise and brown in the oven.
Cream
Adds richness and a cool, smooth contrast when served with the warm pudding.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, bread, butter, sugar, vanilla, cream):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, bread, butter, sugar, vanilla, cream. 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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