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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made from bread crumbs, raisins, suet, fruit, sugar, nutmeg, eggs, brandy, and cream, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and suet

  1. Wash the raisins.

  2. Chop the raisins with the suet, adding a little flour to the suet.

Make the pudding mixture

  1. Add the raisins, orange peel, and citron to the bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs until light.

  3. Mix in the bread crumbs, fruit, sugar, nutmeg, and a pinch of salt.

  4. Finally, add the brandy and cream, and mix well.

Boil and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into a pudding bag and boil for four hours.

  2. Serve with a good sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the pudding and set it into a firm, sliceable body as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and give the pudding a soft, cake-like crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during boiling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that deepens the flavour.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the mixture before boiling.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding in the bag. Seal the pudding bag tightly and keep it fully submerged in boiling water for the whole four hours. Eggs set as the mixture heats, and water entering the bag or the pot boiling dry leaves the pudding soggy or dense.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Apricotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, beef, nutmeg, egg, brandy, cream. 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 →

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