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Dessert

Boiled Bread-pudding

A simple boiled pudding made from stale bread, milk, eggs, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Boiled Bread-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the stale bread and pour hot milk over it.

  2. Let it soak for 1 hour in a covered basin.

  3. Beat the soaked mixture with the contents of the two eggs.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a covered basin tied in a cloth.

  2. Place the basin in boiling water and cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with salt or sugar, and flavor with sherry if desired.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the hot milk to become soft and custard-like.
Milk
Hydrates the bread and adds moisture and richness to the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the soaked bread and set during cooking to give the pudding its structure.

The step that matters

Placing the basin in boiling water. The covered basin must be fully submerged and the water kept boiling so the pudding cooks gently and evenly. Water that stops boiling slows the setting of the eggs, leaving the pudding uneven or undercooked in the middle.

“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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