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Dessert

Rum Pudding

A steamed pudding made from stale bread crumbs, rum, sugar, nutmeg, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crumbs

  1. Grate the stale bread crumbs into a bowl.

  2. Pour enough rum over the crumbs to moisten them and let soak.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the soaked crumbs with sugar and nutmeg.

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for 1 hour until done.

  2. Turn the pudding onto a hot dish.

  3. Pour ½ tumbler of rum over the pudding and light it on fire.

  4. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Rum + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Rum + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,007 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body of the pudding, soaking up moisture to hold its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly and taste rounded.
Rum
Moistens the crumbs and adds aroma; the flaming addition adds a toasted caramel note.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites must be whipped stiff and folded in gently. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, leaving a dense pudding instead of a light, airy one.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, rum, sugar, egg, butter. 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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