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Dessert

Jam Pudding

Jam pudding is a custard-soaked stale bread dish baked with jam and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Jam Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dish

  1. Spread slices of stale bread with butter, then with jam.

  2. Fit the slices closely into a buttered baking dish until it is two-thirds full.

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by adding the beaten eggs and sugar to the scalding milk, but do not let it boil.

Soak and bake

  1. Lay a heavy saucer on the bread and butter to prevent floating.

  2. Moisten gradually with the hot custard.

  3. Let all soak for fifteen minutes before placing the dish in the oven.

  4. Bake until hot throughout.

  5. Remove the saucer to allow the pudding to brown evenly.

  6. Serve cold.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Milk + berrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding holds together when baked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving the pudding its moist texture.
Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and aids browning on the surface.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown evenly.
Sweet jam
Adds fruit sweetness and flavour layered through the bread.

The step that matters

Do not let the custard boil. Boiling the milk-egg mixture can scramble the eggs, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, set custard.

Swap the berry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Berrythe original

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