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Dessert

Feiars' Pudding

A bread pudding made by soaking bread in an egg, sugar, milk, and nutmeg mixture, fried and served with wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Feiars' Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Toast the bread and remove the crusts.

  2. Cut each slice of bread into four pieces and cover them with the egg mixture.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg and stir in the sugar, boiling milk, and nutmeg.

Soak and fry

  1. Let the bread soak in the mixture for 2 hours.

  2. Fry the soaked bread in hot lard until brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with wine sauce poured over the pudding.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 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, soaking up the egg mixture to become tender inside.
Egg
Sets when heated, binding the soaked bread into a custard-like pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, and carries the sugar and nutmeg into the bread.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown when fried.
Lard
Conducts heat to the bread surface, promoting browning and a crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Fry the soaked bread in hot lard until brown. The bread must be fried in hot fat so the surface browns quickly and crisps before the soaked interior turns soggy or greasy. Too cool a pan lets the bread absorb fat and fall apart.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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