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Dessert

Vennoise Pudding

A steamed bread pudding made with bread crumbs, candied peel, raisins, lemon, sugar, eggs, milk, cream, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Vennoise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cut stale bread into dice.

  2. Combine bread crumbs, powdered sugar, and sultana raisins in a basin.

  3. Grate the lemon rind into the basin.

  4. Add chopped candied peel to the basin.

  5. Pour in the sherry.

Make the custard

  1. Boil a saucepan of warm water.

  2. Brown the lump sugar in a stewpan. Add milk to the browned sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Pour the colored milk into the egg yolks, stirring continuously.

  4. Mix the milk and egg mixture into the basin ingredients.

  5. Add the cream.

Steam

  1. Butter a 1½ pint mold and pour the pudding mixture into it. Butter a piece of kitchen paper and cover the top of the mold.

  2. Place the mold in the boiling water to steam, ensuring the water reaches halfway up the mold.

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

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

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the liquid custard.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a soft, custard-like texture when steamed.
Milk
Moistens the bread and forms the custard base with the egg yolks.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother texture to the custard.
Lump sugar
Browned to a caramel for color and a deeper, toasted sweetness.
Sultana raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Browning the lump sugar. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to caramelize, so it can turn bitter if overcooked. Stop when it is a deep amber and add the milk carefully, since the hot sugar can spatter and seize.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, milk, cream, raisin, sherry. 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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