Skip to main content
Dessert

Steamed Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made from bread crumbs, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, and baking powder, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

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

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

  4. Beat the eggs and yolks together, then mix them into the bread mixture along with the flavoring and baking powder.

  5. Beat the mixture for 2 to 3 minutes until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into two buttered molds and steam for about 1 hour or until set.

  2. Serve with hard sauce, meringue sauce, butter sauce, or maple syrup.

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 body of the pudding and absorb the liquid as it steeps.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to give the pudding its firm structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness through extra fat and emulsifying lecithin.
Milk
Hydrates the crumbs and gives a soft, moist texture once steamed.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming to lighten the pudding's texture.

The step that matters

Steaming until set. Eggs set gradually as they heat, so the pudding should be steamed gently and checked until firm. Overcooking at high heat can make it rubbery and dry, while undercooking leaves it runny in the centre.

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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes