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Dessert

Manchester Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, sugar, butter, eggs, essence, and preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Manchester Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Pour boiling milk over bread crumbs and beat into a smooth batter.

  2. Add sugar, butter, egg yolks, egg whites, and essence to the batter.

Assemble and steam

  1. Pour preserves into the bottom of a mold.

  2. Pour the batter over the preserves.

  3. Steam for 2 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. 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. 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk to form the body of the batter.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set as it steams.
Egg whites
Add airiness and help the pudding set with a lighter texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a softer, moister crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its tender texture.
Preserves
Form a sweet fruity layer that softens as the pudding steams.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steam heat must be gentle and steady so the egg-thickened batter sets evenly. Too much heat or boiling can make the pudding rough, pocked, or watery.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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