Skip to main content
Dessert

Fat or Marrow Pudding

A pudding made from stale bread crumbs, boiling milk, clarified fat, raisins, sugar, nutmeg, and eggs, baked in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Fat or Marrow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soaked base

  1. Sift stale bread through a wire sieve to make ½ pint of fine crumbs.

  2. Pour 1½ pints of boiling milk over the crumbs and soak for a while.

Mix the pudding

  1. While still hot, add 4 ounces of clarified fat, 4 ounces of raisins, sugar, and nutmeg to taste.

  2. Beat the mixture until the fat is melted.

  3. Stir in 4 eggs.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the pudding into a buttered mold and boil for 3 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 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. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and give the pudding its body and soft structure.
Milk
Softens the crumbs and provides the liquid that sets into a moist custard-like texture.
Clarified fat
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel by coating the crumbs and melting through the mixture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding as it cooks.
Raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs while the mixture is still warm. Eggs thicken when heated gently; if the mixture is too cold, the fat may solidify and the eggs will not blend evenly, so the pudding can turn out greasy or uneven in texture.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

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

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

You might also like

Soft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBread Crumb CakesBread Crumb Cakes30 recipesGingerbreadGingerbread25 recipes