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Dessert

Boiled Bread Pudding

A boiled bread pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, molasses, fruit, spices, butter, salt, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in hot milk until soft.

  2. Add molasses, fruit or raisins, spices, butter, salt, baking soda, and flour.

  3. Mix well and pour into a suitable pot.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil or steam for three hours.

  2. Serve with sweet 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Absorb the hot milk and form the soft, bulky body of the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a rich, slightly acidic flavor.
Flour
Adds starch that thickens the batter and helps it hold together as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the batter and aid rising.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a softer, more tender texture.
Fruit or raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for three hours. Steady, gentle heat cooks the starch and bread through evenly. Boiling too hard or letting the pot boil dry can leave the pudding uneven or scorched, and it needs enough water to keep it cooking gently.

“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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