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Dessert

Marrow Pudding

A bread pudding made with milk, eggs, beef marrow, brandy, sugar, nutmeg, and topped with citron slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Marrow 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.

Make the pudding

  1. Pour boiling milk over grated bread and let it cool.

  2. Once cooled, add eggs, beef marrow, brandy, sugar, and nutmeg, and mix all ingredients well.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) or boil until set.

Serve

  1. Top with slices of citron 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk and eggs as it sets.
Eggs
Set the custard as they heat, binding the pudding into a firm, sliceable texture.
Beef marrow
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, savory-sweet texture.
Milk
Softens the grated bread and supplies liquid that the eggs set into a custard.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor depth to the pudding.

The step that matters

Letting the milk-soaked bread cool before adding eggs. Eggs added to very hot milk can scramble instead of blending smoothly. Cooling the bread mixture first lets the eggs combine evenly and set into a smooth custard when baked.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, beef, brandy, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, beef, brandy, 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.

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