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Dessert

Boiled Bread Pudding, No. 2

A boiled bread pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, eggs, sugar, currants, citron, raisins, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Bread Pudding, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix the bread crumbs with the lemon rind and dried fruits in a large bowl.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together, then stir in the milk.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the bread mixture until it fills the bowl.

Boil and serve

  1. Grease two 1.5-pint tin molds and pour the mixture into them without pressing down.

  2. Tie a cloth over each mold and place them in a kettle.

  3. Add boiling water to the kettle until it half covers the molds.

  4. Cover the kettle and boil for 1.5 hours.

  5. Serve hot with 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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firmly as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the milk and egg.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and forms the custard with the eggs.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Do not press down the mixture in the molds. Packing the bread crumbs compresses them and makes the pudding dense. Loose filling lets the crumbs stay light and absorb the egg custard evenly while steaming.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, sugar, raisin, lemon, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, raisin, lemon, egg. 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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