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Dessert

Almond and Bread Pudding

A pudding made with sweet and bitter almonds, milk, bread crumbs, beef suet, sugar, flour, lemon, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond and Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch and pound the sweet and bitter almonds.

  2. Simmer the almonds in milk over low heat for 15 minutes to extract flavor.

Make the batter

  1. Combine the milk and almonds with the bread crumbs in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the shredded beef suet, sugar, flour, lemon rind, lemon juice, and beaten eggs.

  3. Mix thoroughly and pour into a well-oiled mold.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for 3 hours without stopping.

  2. Serve with sweet 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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 set it into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Stale bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and absorb the milk to give the pudding its body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Sweet almonds
Supply the main nutty flavor and some richness to the pudding.
Flour
Helps thicken the batter and gives the pudding structure.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 hours without stopping. Steady, continuous simmering cooks the egg and crumb mixture through evenly. If the water stops boiling, the pudding can turn heavy or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, milk, bread, beef, sugar, flour, 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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