Skip to main content
Dessert

Thanksgiving Pudding

A baked bread pudding with raisins, milk, eggs, sugar, jelly, and frosted with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Thanksgiving Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble and soak

  1. Butter the bread slices and layer them in a deep pudding dish with seeded raisins.

  2. Fill the dish nearly full, then pour over 1 quart of milk mixed with 3 beaten eggs and 1 cup of sugar.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Steam and top

  1. In the morning, place the dish in a steamer and cook for 4 to 5 hours.

  2. Once done, spread jelly over the top.

  3. Beat 2 egg whites until stiff, then mix in 4 tablespoons of sugar and frost the pudding.

  4. Set the pudding in the oven at 350°F (175°C) to brown.

  5. Sprinkle a little cinnamon and nutmeg between each layer.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweetened whipped cream flavored with vanilla.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the structure and soaks up the custard so the pudding holds together.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a soft, moist custard.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meringue topping brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the bread layers.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms a light topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue topping. Beaten egg white topping can turn from golden to scorched quickly in the oven, so it needs watching while it browns. Sugar in the topping caramelizes as it heats, which is what gives the browning.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, milk, egg, sugar, cinnamon, 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 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes