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Dessert

Boiled Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made by boiling bread with milk, sugar, butter, fruit, and spiced eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Boiled Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding base

  1. In a large pot, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Stir in the bread and keep stirring until it becomes smooth and soft.

  3. Add the sugar, butter, salt, and the fruit, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites lightly, then mix in the cinnamon and mace or nutmeg.

  5. Combine the spiced eggs with the pudding mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered tin boiler.

  2. Place the boiler in a kettle of boiling water, cover it, and boil for 2 hours (1.5 hours if short on time).

  3. To serve, run a thin knife around the edges of the pudding, then invert it onto a serving dish.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Dates + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together283 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up milk to set into a soft, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a custard-like texture as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and gives the pudding its moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender texture and mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the crumb and balance the spices.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the pudding steaming gently in boiling water for the full time. Steaming in a covered vessel within boiling water cooks the egg-thickened custard gently and evenly. Cutting the time short can leave the centre wet and unset, since the eggs need sustained heat to coagulate fully.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Datesthe original

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

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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