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Dessert

Boiled Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made from soaked bread, milk, eggs, sugar, lemon, mace, and optional raisins or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread 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 ↓

Boiled Bread 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.

Soak and mix

  1. Pour the boiled milk or cream over the grated bread and let it soak for 1 to 2 hours.

  2. Mash the soaked bread and mix it finely.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, lemon juice, and ground mace, and mix well.

Bake and boil

  1. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

  2. If desired, add raisins or a splash of wine before boiling.

  3. Boil the pudding for 4 hours.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Absorbs the hot milk and forms the body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the pudding into a firm custard-like structure.
Milk or cream
Provides moisture and softens the bread into a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the eggs and milk.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma that lifts the rich custard.
Ground mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Mash the soaked bread finely. Dry or lumpy bread pieces stay firm and uneven, while a fully broken-down crumb blends evenly with the eggs and milk, giving a smooth, uniform set.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, egg, sugar, lemon, mace, wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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