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Steamed Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, raisins, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Heat the milk and pour it over the beaten eggs and sugar.

  2. Stir in the corn starch and cook for one minute.

  3. Pour the mixture over the bread crumbs and beat until it forms a batter.

Layer and steam

  1. Layer some batter in a buttered pudding mold, then add suet, raisins, and sprinkle with sugar.

  2. Repeat the layering until the mold is nearly full.

  3. Fit on the top, place in a steamer over boiling water, and steam for at least two hours.

  4. If you don't have a steamer, boil for one and a half hours.

Turn out and serve

  1. Once done, dip the mold in cold water for half a minute and carefully turn it out onto a hot, flat dish.

  2. Serve hot with wine 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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
Bind the batter and help the pudding set as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body that the batter holds together.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and egg mixture so the batter holds its shape.

The step that matters

Keep the mold fully sealed and steaming gently. Water must not boil into the mold and the steam must stay steady, or the pudding turns watery or dense. Cooking the starch in the milk mixture fully thickens it, which helps the pudding hold together when turned out.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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