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Dessert

Rhubarb Pudding

A layered bread pudding made with sliced stale bread, rhubarb, sugar, and water, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,852 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. 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.

Prepare

  1. Butter the slices of stale bread generously.

  2. Layer rhubarb in an earthen baking dish and sprinkle lightly with sugar.

  3. Cover with bread slices.

  4. Add another layer of rhubarb, sugar, and bread.

  5. Continue layering until the dish is full, finishing with bread on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour 1 cup of water over the layers.

  2. Cover tightly with a plate.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes or more.

  4. Serve hot or cold with sugar and cream.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 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

Light stale bread
Soaks up the liquid and sets into a soft, custardy structure as it bakes.
Rhubarb
Adds tart acidity that balances the sweetness and moistens the layers as it softens.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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