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Dessert

German Pudding, Brown Bread

A sweet pudding made from stale brown bread, sherry or milk, butter, sugar, almonds, raisins, currants, lemon rind, cinnamon, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

German Pudding, Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the brown bread crumbs in sherry or boiling milk for 30 minutes.

  2. Mix in the butter, sugar, almonds, lemon rind, cinnamon, raisins, currants, and egg yolks until well blended.

Assemble and cook

  1. Butter a mold and fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold and boil or steam for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Turn out the pudding and serve with wine or German pudding 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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brown bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and absorb the liquid as it soaks.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help bind it as it sets during cooking.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the pudding and give it a airy rise.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture to the crumb.
Almonds
Add body, nutty flavour and a little richness to the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the sherry and lemon.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that gives the pudding its lightness. Stirring them vigorously deflates that foam, leaving a dense result. Fold gently until just combined.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sherry, butter, sugar, almond, cinnamon, raisin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sherry, butter, sugar, almond, cinnamon, raisin. 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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