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Dessert

Madeira Pudding

A sweet pudding made with diced bread, sugar, eggs, milk, Madeira or sherry, and lemon rind, steamed until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Madeira Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the bread, sugar, and lemon rind in a bowl.

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk, then pour it over the beaten eggs while stirring.

  2. Add the sherry and pour the mixture over the diced bread.

  3. Let it soak for 15 to 20 minutes.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered mold and steam gently for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with custard, wine sauce, or jam syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 and soaks up the custard to set into a soft crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to give the pudding its structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and, with the eggs, forms the custard that holds the pudding together.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps give the crumb a tender texture.
Madeira or sherry
Adds aroma and a mellow, fortified-wine flavour that cuts through the richness.

The step that matters

Steaming gently. Steaming at a gentle heat lets the eggs set evenly without curdling or making the pudding rubbery, so the crumb stays soft and moist.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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