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Dessert

A Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made by boiling milk, sugar, bread crumbs, butter, eggs, and nutmeg or lemon rind in a buttered mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Sweeten a pint of new milk with three ounces of fine sugar, add a few grains of salt, and pour it boiling over half a pound of fine, lightly grated bread crumbs.

  2. Add an ounce of fresh butter, and cover the mixture with a plate. Let it remain for half an hour or more.

Finish and boil

  1. Stir in four large well-whisked eggs and a flavouring of nutmeg or lemon rind.

  2. Pour the mixture into a thickly buttered mould or basin, which holds a pint and a half, and which ought to be quite full.

  3. Tie a paper and a cloth tightly over, and boil the pudding for exactly an hour and ten minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

919Calories
29 gProtein
27 gFat
141 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 9 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  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. 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

Eggs
Bind the pudding and set it into a soft, sliceable custard as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot sweetened milk to form the body of the pudding.
Milk
Moistens the bread and forms the custard that sets around it.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a full mould. The mould should be filled to the top because the pudding rises and settles as it boils. Filling it fully helps it cook evenly, and leaving headspace can cause spillage or a misshapen result.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, milk, butter, egg, lemon, nutmeg. 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 bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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