Name: Boiled Bread Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound stale bread crumbs; ½ pound beef suet, chopped fine; 1 quart milk; ½ pound seeded raisins; ½ pound currants; 4 eggs; 1 teaspoon baking powder; flour, as needed to make a stiff batter

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 ↓

Boiled Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

In a bowl, combine stale bread crumbs, chopped beef suet, milk, raisins, currants, eggs, and baking powder.
Add flour gradually until you achieve a stiff batter.

Boil and serve

Grease a mold and pour the batter into it.
Boil the mold in water for three hours.
Serve with 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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs: Form the body of the pudding and absorb the milk to hold its shape.
Beef suet: Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Milk: Moistens the crumbs and helps form a soft, cohesive batter.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Baking powder: Releases gas to lighten the pudding and give it some rise.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Add flour gradually until the batter is stiff. Adding flour gradually lets you judge the consistency. A batter that is too wet will not hold its shape in the mold and may turn soggy, while one that is too stiff can make the pudding dense.

Swap the currant

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

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Coconutfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beef, milk, raisin, egg, flour. 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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Boiled Bread Pudding