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Dessert

Newark Pudding

A baked milk and egg pudding with bread crumbs, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Newark Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in 1 pint of the milk.

  4. Stir in the rice flour mixed with a little cold milk.

  5. Add the remaining pint of milk, melted butter, vanilla, and the prepared raisins.

  6. Gently fold in the whisked egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-greased mold and bake for 1 hour.

  2. Turn out and serve with hard 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, whisked and folded in, lighten it and help it set.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that hydrates the crumbs and flour and sets into the custard.
Rice flour
Thickens the batter and adds structure so the pudding holds its shape when turned out.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture; dredging in flour keeps them from sinking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the whisked egg whites. Whites hold air only when whisked well and folded gently; overmixing deflates them, leaving a denser pudding. Gentle folding keeps the lift the eggs provide.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, bread, rice, flour, vanilla, butter):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, bread, rice, flour, vanilla, 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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