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Dessert

Steamed Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made from bread crumbs, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, baking powder, and lemon flavor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Steamed Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the bread crumbs and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the butter and milk, then bring to a boil.

  3. Pour the boiling milk and butter mixture over the bread crumbs and let it steep for a while.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the whole eggs and egg yolks together, then mix them into the bread mixture.

  5. Add the lemon flavoring and baking powder, then beat the entire mixture for 2 to 3 minutes.

Steam

  1. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold and steam for 1 hour.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding, soaking up the milk and butter to create its body.
Eggs and egg yolks
Bind the mixture and set during steaming, giving the pudding a rich, tender structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, tender crumb.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and helps form a soft, custard-like texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lighten the pudding and help it rise during steaming.

The step that matters

Beating the batter after adding the baking powder. Beating for 2 to 3 minutes builds air and evenly distributes the leavening, so the pudding rises lightly instead of turning dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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