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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made from bread crumbs, milk, molasses, fruit, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in hot milk.

  2. Mix in molasses, mixed fruit, baking soda, egg, flour, butter, salt, and spices.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased dish.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for three hours.

  2. Serve with a sauce of your choice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to form the soft, moist body of the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a rich, slightly bitter flavor.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set as it cooks.
Flour
Adds body and helps hold the pudding together in its structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the texture and help it rise.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender crumb and flavor.

The step that matters

Steam for three hours. Steaming gently and evenly sets the egg and starch without drying the pudding. Keep the water at a steady simmer and check that it does not run dry during the long cook.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, molasses, raisin, nuts, egg, flour. 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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