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Dessert

Pixm Pudding

A sweet bread pudding made with stale bread, flour, suet, butter, raisins, currants, lemon zest, lemon juice, nutmeg, eggs, sugar, spices, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pixm Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Soak the stale bread in milk until soft.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the soaked bread with flour, suet, butter, raisins, currants, lemon zest, lemon juice, nutmeg, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, salt, allspice, and ginger.

  3. Stir until the mixture is the thickness of pound cake.

Cook

  1. Pour into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Boil for 6 hours.

  3. This mixture will make several puddings; you can use half if desired.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as they set during cooking.
Flour
Adds bulk and body, helping the mixture hold its shape as a pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour.
Stale bread
Soaked in milk, it absorbs liquid and gives the pudding its tender, custardy base.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture is the thickness of pound cake. Too thin and the pudding may turn out loose and soggy; too stiff and it cooks up dense. The soaked bread and flour set the texture, so the batter should be thick enough to hold its shape in the mold.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, butter, raisin, lemon, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, butter, raisin, lemon, nutmeg, 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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