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Dessert

Bread-and-apple Pudding

A baked pudding made with bread crumbs, sliced apples, sugar, cinnamon, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Bread-and-apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Butter a deep pudding dish.

Assemble and soak

  1. Layer bread crumbs and sliced apples in the dish until nearly full.

  2. Dissolve sugar and cinnamon in boiling water and pour over the layers.

  3. Let the pudding stand for 30 minutes to swell.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until brown, about 45 minutes.

  2. Serve with liquid 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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provide tart fruit flavor and moisture that softens as the pudding bakes.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the liquid to set a soft texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Butter
Greases the dish so the pudding releases cleanly and adds richness.

The step that matters

Letting the pudding stand before baking. The 30-minute rest gives the bread crumbs time to absorb the sweet cinnamon liquid. Skipping it can leave dry pockets of crumb and a loose, watery set once baked.

Swap the apple

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

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

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