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Bread

Marrow Pudding

A pudding made from grated bread, boiling milk, eggs, beef marrow, lemon juice, mace, nectarine extract, rose water, and optional raisins and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Marrow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Grate the bread and pour the boiling milk over the crumbs.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the eggs and beef marrow.

Flavour and finish

  1. Stir in the lemon juice, soaked mace, nectarine extract, and rose water.

  2. If desired, add the raisins and blanched almonds.

  3. Boil the mixture for 3 hours, or omit the fruit and bake it instead.

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. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Lemon + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Baker's bread
Its crumb soaks up the hot milk and forms the body of the pudding.
Eggs
They set when cooked, giving the pudding structure and a firm, custard-like texture.
Beef marrow
Its fat enriches the pudding and adds moisture and a rich mouthfeel.
Rich milk
Its liquid hydrates the bread crumb and adds richness and tenderness.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs begin to set at higher temperatures, so adding them to very hot milk can scramble them and leave the pudding lumpy instead of smooth and evenly set.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, beef, lemon, mace, rose):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, beef, lemon, mace, rose. 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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