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Dessert

Bread Pudding, Steamed

A steamed pudding made from stale bread crumbs, eggs, milk, molasses, raisins, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Pudding, Steamed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg, milk, molasses, raisins, bread crumbs, baking soda, and melted butter. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming dish.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with egg sauce or hard 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + breadtop 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 batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
Stale bread crumbs
Provide the body of the pudding and absorb the liquid ingredients.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the texture.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, molasses, bread, butter. 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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