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Rhubarb Pudding

A baked bread pudding made with rhubarb, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Rhubarb 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.

Assemble

  1. Line a pudding dish with slices of buttered bread.

  2. Add a layer of cut rhubarb and sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Repeat layers of bread and butter and rhubarb until the dish is full, finishing with rhubarb and sugar on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with a plate and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve warm.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Bread + rhubarbtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Butter + rhubarbtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Slices of bread
Form the layers that soak up the rhubarb juices and hold the pudding together.
Butter
Coats the bread, adding richness and helping it brown and soften as it bakes.
Rhubarb
Supplies the tart fruit and moisture that flavour the pudding as it cooks down.
Sugar
Sweetens the rhubarb and helps balance its sharp acidity.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Rhubarbthe original

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