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Bread

Scrap Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made from soaked bread, suet, sugar, currants, raisins, peel, spices, baking soda, milk, and optional egg, steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Scrap Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Weigh the bread.

  2. Soak the bread in cold water for as long as possible.

  3. Squeeze the bread dry.

  4. Crumble the bread with a fork.

Prepare the fruit and suet

  1. Chop the suet and the peel.

  2. Clean the currants.

Mix and steam

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients except the baking soda.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk.

  3. Add the dissolved baking soda to the mixture, along with the egg if using. Mix everything thoroughly.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a greased basin.

  5. Steam for 2 to 3 hours.

  6. Let the pudding cool.

  7. Turn it out.

  8. Serve with sauce.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crusts
Soaked and squeezed, they form the bulk and soft crumb of the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its browning and flavour.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set into a firm, cohesive pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the mixture to lighten its texture as it steams.

The step that matters

Squeeze the bread dry. Bread soaked in water holds a lot of moisture; if it is not squeezed well, the excess water makes the pudding wet and heavy after steaming.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, raisin, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, raisin, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, milk. 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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