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Dessert

Bread and Apple Pudding

A baked pudding made with bread crumbs, sliced apples, sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Bread and Apple Pudding

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 Apple Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dish

  1. Butter a pudding dish.

  2. Layer bread crumbs and sliced apples alternately in the dish.

  3. Sprinkle sugar over each layer.

  4. Top with a final layer of bread crumbs.

  5. Pour 2 to 3 tablespoons of melted butter over the top.

Bake

  1. Place 2 or 3 nails under the dish to prevent burning.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the apples' cooking qualities.

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.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the juices as it bakes.
Thinly sliced apples
Supply moisture and fruity flavour, softening as they cook through the layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and helps them caramelise slightly at the edges.
Melted butter
Adds richness and helps the top crumbs brown evenly.

The step that matters

Placing nails under the dish. Raising the dish off the oven floor lets heat circulate beneath it, reducing the risk of the base scorching before the apples are tender.

Swap the apple

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

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

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