Skip to main content
Main

Marrow Pudding

A baked pudding made from stale bread, marrow or suet, eggs, dried fruit, spices, and covered with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Marrow Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the bread and milk

  1. Grate the inside of the stale loaf.

  2. Heat the milk until hot, then pour it over the grated bread and let it soak until swollen.

Make the filling

  1. Shred the marrow or suet and beat the eggs.

  2. Mix the soaked bread, marrow, eggs, currants, raisins, almonds, candied citron, orange peel, and lemon peel together.

  3. Sweeten to taste and season with nutmeg and cinnamon.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover a flat stoneware dish with puff pastry, marking it neatly.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 25 minutes if flat, or 30 minutes if deep.

  3. Optionally, sprinkle with pounded sugar and decorate with sliced almonds before serving.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaked in hot milk, it absorbs liquid and forms the body of the pudding.
Milk
Soaks into the bread and sets with the eggs to create a soft, custardy texture.
Marrow or suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Currants and raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, raisin, almond, orange, lemon, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cranberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, raisin, almond, orange, lemon, sugar. 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 marrow pudding recipes

Beef 18Bone 3 See all 29 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesAlmond SoupAlmond Soup60 recipesAlmond SaladAlmond Salad6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes