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Dessert

Madeira Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with bread, sugar, eggs, milk, Madeira or sherry, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Madeira Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Mix the bread, sugar, and lemon rind in a bowl.

  2. Boil the milk.

  3. Pour the boiled milk over the beaten eggs while stirring.

  4. Add the sherry to the egg mixture.

  5. Pour the egg mixture over the bread mixture.

  6. Let the mixture soak for 15 to 20 minutes.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Steam gently for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with custard, wine sauce, or jam syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Absorbs the custard during soaking, giving the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Eggs
Set when steamed, binding the bread and milk into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that soaks the bread and cooks into the custard.
Caster sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly during cooking.
Madeira or sherry
Adds aroma and a rich, wine-based flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam gently for 2 hours. Steaming at a gentle heat cooks the egg custard evenly. Vigorous boiling can make the eggs curdle and leave the pudding rough and holey.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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